Things that go bump in the night
TV crews from horror series ‘NOS4A2’ back in city shooting night scene
WOONSOCKET — The production crew of the AMC television horror series “NOS4A2” took over Market Square Thursday evening for a shoot in an old mill building behind the Museum of Work & Culture and River Falls Restaurant.
The scene appeared to involve “NOS4A2” resident vampire, Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto), leaving the entrance to a bar called Parnassus, which is a set construction attached to a lower level entrance of the old local mill.
The parking lots around the mill were also being used by the production company to store vehicles from the filming, one of the Rolls Royce cars Manx uses to snare his victims, motorcycles like those driven by his counter character, Victoria “Vic” McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings) – a young woman with a psychic ability to help the children captured by Manx in the show – and several large trucks including
one loaded with the trunks of logged trees.
Lance Imor of West Warwick, a member of Teamsters Local 251 working with the company, said the black Rolls Royce is actually one of three being used in the production. A driver, Imor was on set to operate other vehicles used by the production team and noted there are specific drivers in charge of operating the film vehicles.
“I love it,” Imor said of his latest gig working with a film production operation. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years with a lot of different shows and movies,” he said.
He has worked in New York in the past, but Imor said for about 10 years now his film work has all been with companies coming to film in Rhode Island.
“That’s because of the state’s tax credit for filmmakers,” he said.
“If we didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be working,” Imor said.
“NOS4A2” shot its first season in Rhode Island and Haverhill, Mass., last year and recently came back to Rhode Island to shoot its second season, resuming some of the filming that occurred here in Woonsocket and also once again using locations elsewhere in the state.
Woonsocket High School was used for scenes involving McQueen’s final year of school and was renamed William White Memorial High School for the shooting. Other city scenes along the Blackstone River were included in the show’s establishing shots.
The first season also featured locations in Narragansett, where Aunt Carrie’s seafood restaurant was used for filming, Warren, and also in Providence where appropriately, the Providence Athenaeum was tapped as a location for a character’s research work. The historic private library had once been a popular East Side spot for Edgar Allen Poe while he lived in Providence.
As for the new season, Imor said he hopes it does well so that the production company will return for more filmmaking time in the state.
“This is Season 2 and I hope they get a Season 3 and even a Season 4,” the teamster said of the prospects for regular production work ahead.
Over at the street crossing located in front of the city’s Market Square parking lot, Woonsocket Police Capt. Adam T. Remick was found working one of the production project’s police details.
The number of production crew members crossing over to the Event Center at Mill Race, where the company’s canteen had been set up, required Remick to direct traffic occasionally.
The duty did give him an opportunity to spot Quinto, also known for his role as Spock in the updated “Star Trek” movie series, as he was working earlier in the former Aly’s Riverside Pub, also being used as a set for the movie.
“I’ve watched the series a couple of times. It was interesting, you know a SiFi kind of show,” Remick said.
Quinto’s character can be young at times or old, depending on what is happening in the show, according to Remick. “When I saw him today, he was the younger version,” Remick said.
The city, with its varied architecture and significant buildings, has also benefited from the state’s ability to draw production crews while contributing settings and support assistance for movies ranging from “Hachi, A Dog’s Tale,” that had filmed scenes on Main Street and the Woonsocket Train Depot, “The Purge, Election Year,” which included scenes of its annual national bloodletting filmed in a Main Street grocery store and the St. Ann Arts & Cultural Center, and also the comedy “The Polka King,” with Jack Black.
The “NOS4A2” film crew continued working in the area of River Island Park until about midnight Thursday.
A member of the production crew later declined to talk about what was being filmed but noted the crew had rented the park and nearby roads from the city to allow it use the area as a set closed to the public.
The crew member couldn’t say what else might be filmed in the area and added that he didn’t know how long the Rhode Island shooting of “NOS4A2” might continue. He deferred further questions to the company’s media relations department.