DAY ONE
The last fifteen minutes to Kalama was when I started to get really excited. I mean, I was excited before then, too, but after 12 hours of travel (the total of the day), you start to wonder if you’ll ever get there.
We went down the main strip of Kalama, and it is really cute – and very 50’s at first glance. There were some shops, restaurants, a motel, and the market; nothing too fancy, but not really run-down. Very quaint.
Up this big hill (because basically all the business are at the base of the hill, and houses at the top) was the school. Right there, at the end of the road – though I don’t think you can really tell from any of the pictures we’ve seen, it really is RIGHT there. Also, it’s next to a very pretty little chapel.
Anyway, we parked in the famous parking lot (I was jumping up and down with the thought that they (the cast, everyone) had all been there only a few days before). Right away we noticed this other guy who was also taking pictures. We walked around the school kind of shadowing each other, but never actually introduced.
The layout of the school is really cool, though the parking lot seemed smaller thanit looked in pictures I’d seen (I have no idea how they crammed everything in there!). There’s a play ground in the back, which I’m guessing they avoided inshooting the movie – unfortunately, because that could have been really cool. I can totally see Mike swinging on the monkey bars and Jessica, Angela and Lauren skipping or doing hopscotch.
After that (and it was perfect timing – it was just getting dark) we drove down through the town again, took some pictures of some old trucks and with the ‘Welcome to Kalama’ sign.
From there it was straight to Portland, and we found our hotel and got some supper (at about 10:00). It was too dark to take any good pictures, unfortunately.
DAY TWO
We got to Madison High School at about 9:30 Wednesday morning. There were lots of trucks all around the front, so we drove around and parked out back. My dad got out to talk the security guard stationed at the other side of the lot. We found out from him that apparently a girl had tried (and succeeded, I think, though we didn’t get the details) to sneak into the school Tuesday so security was being tightened. We weren’t allowed to get too close to the school, but as it is right next to a park, they couldn’t stop us from hanging around.
We walked around the school once (it is really big), but though there were the big trucks in the front and trailers in the parking lot to the right of the main entrance, there wasn’t much going on and the back area of the school (where the crew parking was) was completely deserted.
Walking through the crew parking lot (which was the only one that actually had cars and not just big trucks or trailers) we looked for the Cullen cars and found none. The only other car I thought might be there was Michael Welch’s, since he drove out from L.A., but I have no idea what it looks like.
There wasn’t much going on that we could see, so we decided to hunt around for the ballet studio, which I thought I had located in downtown Portland (and we did find a ballet studio there, but I don’t think it was the right one). After that we went to Powell’s (a book store) for a while, to get out of the rain. It is amazing and huge, but I won’t go into detail because it has nothing to do with Twilight.
I was anxious to get back to Madison, because we hoped we’d be there in time to see the cast/extras on lunch break, possibly eating in the windowed, cafeteria-like place. (From pictures we’ve seen now, I can tell that that IS actually where they ate, but we must have missed them somehow.)
When we got back to the site at about quarter to twelve/12:00, it was pouring. So of course when we saw the same guy who was at Kalama HS the night before, we sent my dad out to talk to him.
They were out there for quite a while (we watched from the warmth of the car), so I put on my rain jacket (very traditionally yellow) and hopped out to see what was going on. I found out his name was Sean (who is now an honorary TM). We kind of chatted for a while, then decided to check and see if we could get a glimpse of anybody eating, despite the rain.
There wasn’t really anyone in the cafeteria, so we went by the trailers and took pictures of all the name tags. For all we know, the actors could have been in there, but we didn’t see them, and the names were still cool.
We peeked into a courtyard, which was really cool and completely hidden from the outside – you can’t tell that it’s not just part of the building (or at least Icouldn’t).
We’d been at MHS for probably less than an hour, but it was still raining and wewere all wet and cold, so we said ‘see ya later’ to Sean and left to find someplace for lunch.
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We decided to go to The View Point Inn, since it was probably the only chance we’d have gotten to see it. I was worried that we would miss a lot of filming stuff, because we thought it might take an hour to get there, but it ended up being half that, so all was good.
While my dad went in to check if there were any free tables (there were), me and my sister got out of the car to take a few pictures. There was a Jeep Wrangler in the parking lot, and it was right next to a little silver hatchback, but it was a Volkswagen. Hmph.
There was a busload of senior citizens there, but aside that, just us, so it was very quiet (except for Mr. Sinatra, of course). The whole place was so beautiful and elegant that I felt really out of place (being the youngest in the building, along with my dripping pant bottoms and muddy shoes). The menu was really fancy, too, and everything was DELICIOUS!
One of the co-owners was walking from table to table, chatting with the customers, which we thought was really cool. He came by us once and said welcome, hope you enjoy, etc. We didn’t ask him about Twilight just then, but I decided we HAD to, since he was right there!
While we were waiting for our food, we talked about what we thought of the room for the prom scene. We (my mom, sister, and I – my dad hasn’t read the books yet) decided that, while it was gorgeous, it would probably fit better as the Cullen house – it was elegant, had a history, was in the right location (with anamazing view, if not the forests), and had lots of windows, if it wasn’t quite as big as it’s described in the books.
We knew it was being used for the prom scene, though, so we tried to see how it would fit. If all the furniture were cleared away, there’d be an okay-sized dance floor, but still a lot smaller than a school gym. It would also be a little awkward since there is along, glassed-in room attached to the dining room, but it is too disjointed even with the French doors opened. Also, though the fire is big and beautiful, I couldn’t really imagine the Forks HS prom there, with Mike and the cafeteria crowd, etc.
Anyway, when the co-owner (Geoff) passed by again, my mom stopped him and asked him about the filming. He got excited and said he thought we were fans, since we were the youngest group there by far… He asked us where we were from and we chatted a little, but let’s move on to what important things we learned from him…
He confirmed that the prom scene would be filmed there, April 23rd to 26th. He mentioned that Catherine Hardwicke and Stephenie Meyer herself had been there (at which I half-yelled ‘STEPHENIE?’); about two and a half weeks earlier (I think).
He gave us some details about the scene and filming, but I can't share it, sorry guys. It wasn't a whole lot, anyway, so you're not missing out on a whole lot. (We were never actually told not to write about it, but I think it is made pretty clear here: http://twilightmomsforums.freeforums.org/announcement-from-summit-entertainment-t5057.html)
Geoff told us he had never heard of Twilight before being approached, but apparently it was very big, and they were all very excited. He said they were trying to plan one or two big luncheons with the cast and Stephenie (I have no idea when or howthis is going to be happening; I have a guess that the Twilight Moms might be helping plan, but NO confirmation, so I'm clueless) and told us he would probably be able to get us in (I think this is about the point my legs started shaking uncontrollably). Note: I don't know if they want the plans out in the open or not, but I will leave it up unless/until someone tells me to take it down.
He told us Angelo (who we found out later is the other co-owner) knew more (about the filming/luncheon?), so he went over to get him. He came back and told us Angelo was on the phone with one of the Twilight Moms and she wanted to talk to me. Insert eye-bulge smiley here.
I was shown to the phone, and I talked to Rhonda (who is really nice) for about a minute. She told me she hadn’t been able to actually get on-set, either, and that I had to write up a report and post it on the TM website, to which I said ‘of course’, since I’d been planning on contacting them or the Lexicon the pictures I’d taken so far, etc. … By the way, if you're reading this, sorry Rhonda if I sounded a little spacey on the phone; everything was just happening so fast and I was kind of in shock.
Then I went back to the table (and the legs started shaking again) and we had lunch…At one point Angelo talked to us for a few seconds, but I don’t think he told us anything new. Later on Geoff came by again and told us how happy he was we’d come and were the first Twilight fans to visit, etc. Everyone there was so nice.
When we finished our meal, a lady came by and told us that Geoff and Angelo had told her we could take as many pictures as we’d like (we’d asked earlier). It was great that we’d had such a late lunch, because the whole place was cleared out so we could take tons of pictures.
Before going outside for photos, we looked at the rooms upstairs. They are all really nice, and a couple of them have stunning views.
It was really foggy outside and raining off and on, but it was the most amazing and beautiful thing ever. It was all gray mist over the gorge, so you couldn’t see anything (I think you could see a bridge when it had been clear earlier) and it made for super-spookiness. (Also, you could hear cars going by way down there, but not see a thing, which was kind of cool.)
I took a bunch of pictures and skipped around, it was so exciting. Then it started hailing/snowing and we piled in the car and went down, down, down, back to James Madison High School…
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For some reason, this whole chunk is kind of foggy in my memory, so some things might not be exactly right, but anyway…
When we got back down to the site – I think it was around 3:00/3:30 – first thing we saw was Sean, I think - getting something from his car, maybe? We stopped ands aid ‘hi’, confirmed he wasn’t leaving, and drove around to where we had been parked earlier.
We walked over to the corner of the skateboard park thing (it’s right next to theschool), where there was also a mom and her daughter. They (and Sean) told us how earlier they had seen Robert walking by, as well as Kristen (I think) and Stephenie (though they didn’t recognize her at first).
This got me ECSTATIC because I couldn’t believe Stephenie was actually there. I knew she had said she would try to watch some of the filming – so of course I’d had fantasies of meeting her while planning the trip – but I hadn’t really thought she’d be there. Anyway, so we waited around for a while, I think… Two girls came and joined us, but didn’t stay very long… Three more girls came, close to my and my sister’s ages (I think they were 15/16), and they hung around for quite a while.
Lights and fake trees and stuff were being set up by the windows we had been peeking in earlier, trying to catch a glimpse of someone. Me, my sister, and the three girls stood around over there for at least half an hour, and watched them drag trees over and play with a football. Sean and the girl and her mom (I didn’t catch their names) stood over by the skateboard park, which is also closer to where the trailers are, so you could see mostly everyone walking back and forth from the trailer-area to the school.
I glanced over at one point, and in the distance, I saw a familiar figure with very familiar hair and clothes… It was Robert, walking from the trailers to the front doors of the school. I turned on the camera and ran over to where the others stood, kind of jumping around, trying to get a good picture. We didn’t approach him because he was kind of far away, but he went to talk to a security guard, I think, and was facing our direction. I smiled and waved, but he wasn’t paying attention to us (or you know, was doing a good job of ignoring the wildly waving fans).
Anyway, after that we went back and stood in the trees to watch them set up outside for the hallway scene. The weather was being funny and the sun would come out, then hide away again, it would rain then stop, but the wind stayed pretty much the same – strong and cold the whole time.
They were putting up a rain machine (pretty cool) by the windows, and Sean and the other two came over to watch, too… So there were eight of us. My sister had gone back to the car to get the camera with its recharged battery when four of us spotted Robert walking to his trailer and dashed away, cameras in hand.
He was walking with one of the make-up women, I think, but when we half-ran up to him (we were kind of shy and didn’t want to bug him) and asked for pictures/autographs he was nice and stopped, make-up girl looming in the background (I think she was glaring at us).
First impressions upon seeing Robert close up:
1 – Wow. I think I just kind of stared/gaped.
2 – His nose is really narrow/kind of flat on the top.
3 – His lips are really nice & pink.
4 - His forehead is pretty big (not in a bad way).
And... 1+2+3+4=some kind of angelic alien... a veeeery pretty one.
He signed a bunch of autographs for the girl with her mom and one for Sean’s mom. I kept waiting for him to look up so I could see if he had the contacts in; he did. There was another family, who I guess I hadn’t really noticed before (I’m not sure how long they’d been around) and the daughter (about twelve or thirteen, I’d say) got her picture taken with Rob.
It was about then, I think, that my sister got back with the camera, and the other three girls noticed we had left/where we had gone, so they came running over, too. The mom told me she’d take my picture with Rob, and first I refused because I felt shy and I didn’t like to take up a lot of Robert's time – but when the other girls came over and it was clear he was going to be there for a while anyway, I agreed.
Unfortunately, the zoom was in on the camera, and it was really rushed, so the picture sucks (or at least the half with me), but I’m fine with it. I still can’t believe he was right there. The best part was, while we were smiling, waiting to see if the picture had been taken or not, he asked (in his British accent!) what my name was. I told him and he said ‘Nice to meet you’ which I know is just a formality, but just the same it was nice to hear Robert/Edward say it was nice to meet me. Then he laughed and said something about a funny conditionto be meeting in (we were both still smiling at the camera).
Then I backed away and my sister and the other girls got their pictures taken with him. I felt really bad for holding him up, and said ‘thank you’ at least twice. He really didn’t say much, and when he did his voice was veeery soft. We were standing real close – like maybe two or three feet away – and I wanted to take a million pictures, but I wasn’t about to go snapping away with him right there… Just because he’s famous doesn’t mean we can be as rude to him as we like.
The whole thing was kind of insane. We had been standing around for like an hour, and then he was there, and then he was gone. As he left, he was standing by a garbage can, and I tried to snap a few more pictures… It was like he’d stepped out of the ‘normal person’ zone and was far enough away again that he was part of that bizarre, celebrity world, where I could take pictures again… I wish the whole celebrity thing didn’t really exist… While it was great to get pictures of Rob, mostly I just wished we could ACTUALLY talk to him, just like we would with anyone else.
Anyway, once Robert was gone, the three girls left, as did the one girl and her mom, I think. I don’t remember exactly what we did, but I know we stood around watching the crew set up for a long time. I think my sister went to get my parents (who had been hiding out in the warmth of the van all this time). I talked to the dad of the family of three… They drove out all the way from Los Angeles (about 18 hours, I think) to see the filming. They stayed around for the rest of the night (we found out from Sean that the cast would be leaving around 6:00-7:00, so we planned to hang around until then and try to catch Stephenie as she left).
Me and my sister stood around with Sean while the parents went to buy coffees/hot chocolates for everyone (except the security guard the other family was talking to… I felt bad for him even though they have their own coffee trailer). We saw Kristen leap out of the building and behind a truck, and waited to see her again, but I guess she was really shy, because she was jumping into a car to be driven like ten seconds to her trailer (also, she has to do school work, so she might not have had time to stop and say hello). We saw her go by a few more times while we stood there, but it was hard to get any pictures.
We talked a bit with one of the security guards… They were all pretty nice, though I know they were really bored just standing around. And cold. My feet were wet practically the whole day, and the wind was horrible. I stomped around on the spot a lot to keep warm.
What else… I’m pretty sure we saw Nikki Reed walk by at least once, but we didn’t really approach her. Later on, when filming was wrapping up, I guess, we saw Gregory Tyree Boyce (Tyler) come out of the school, and then Michael Welch and Justin Chon, and they walked to the trailers together.
We waited around for Stephenie for a long time, while extras began to trickle out the doors. Finally one lady came by and told us all the main cast had left, though when my mom asked about Stephenie, she just shrugged. The other family left, and eventually so did Sean. I made my mom and sister hang out longer and was getting a little frantic because we were heading off fairly early the next morning and wouldn’t get to go by the filming site for much more than half an hour before we left.
We asked a few extras if Stephenie was there, and they all answered “Who?”. Finally we asked a more official-looking crewmember, and he didn’t know who she was either, but he led us to a trailer and let us ask people ‘who would know’. One of them (a lady who we had seen running around all day) said she wasn’t sure, the other said probably not (it was the same one who told us the cast had all left; I think she just wanted us to leave). So we went back to our watch-station, trying to decide how much longer we would wait.
One of the guys from the trailer came by and told us Stephenie COULD still be there, since no one actually had knowledge of her leaving the building. It didn’t help a whole lot, but he was nice. Then the first guy came back and told us sorry for not being able to find her, which I thought was really nice since we were the ones hanging around and bugging everyone.
Another extra came out and when she saw us standing asked if we were looking for Rob. We told her no, Stephenie. She said she’d had no idea Stephenie was even there, and she’d been on set all day.
Finally, we decided to just go back to the hotel. It was around 7:00, I think, and we were all frozen and stiff-legged. I was insanely frustrated that Stephenie was so close, but that I probably wouldn’t get a chance to see her.
DAY THREE
We woke at 7:00 and showered up. Me and my dad headed off to Madison at about 8:15, I think, and planned to be back at the hotel by 9:00 so we could get an early start to Forks.
When we got there, the first thing we noticed was that all the big trucks that had been blocking the front of the school the day before were now moved to the back parking lot where we’d parked. It was pretty quiet and there didn’t seem to be much going on so we walked once around the school.
There was a big crane & light set up in the back corner, pointing in one of the windows (the cafeteria). We could see silhouettes, but nothing else except the big, cylindrical balloon in the ceiling (you can see it in the video posted a few days ago as well as a few pictures other people have taken). We went back around the front and were just about to take a few more pictures of Emmett’s Jeep (the only of the Cullen cars that was hanging around, sadly), when we noticed three figures walk across from the trailers to the school ahead of us.
My dad thought they looked too young to be actors (they weren’t facing our way, but were short), but I took a few half-running steps forward to get a better look. I think it was actually the hair that stood out to me (though I noticed the high heels, too – not likely to be worn by an extra) and called out ‘STEPHENIE!’. And she turned, and it was her. (With Elizabeth her publicist and Jacob her brother, I think - I really wish I'd gotten their pictures. There was a kind of look exchanged, like ‘haha, and we thought we could go by unnoticed by the fans just this once.)
And I ran over and wanted to give her a hug, but didn’t. And wanted to tell her how awesome Twilight is, but didn’t. Right away, though, she asked how I was and who I was. I told her, and told her where we came from (Canada). She told us that unfortunately we wouldn’t get to see filming because it was all indoors (which we already knew, but that was okay). And we said we were leaving soon anyway, to Forks, and she said it was beautiful there. And then I got my picture taken with her and she just… kind of left? I hate how it all happens so fast. My memory is all a blur. I don’t even remember if I said ‘thank you’.
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That's it, folks! I'm going to try to upload some of the pictures tonight, but I have no idea how that's going to work out... We'll see.
