Dollars rain down for commercial shoot in Earlville
By Andrea Bloom

      Money rained down over Earlville Tuesday as city officials cleared the streets and emergency crews stood by.

 The dollar bills floating through the air and piling in drifts on the ground were fake, blown out of air guns by a film crew from overhead cranes, on the ground, and in a moving truck.  The crew was in town shooting scenes for a Mega Lotto commercial.

      Earlville was chosen as the location for the commercial because of its small-town look, according to Valerie Bulinski, the location manager for the production.
 
      Ms. Bulinski says she found Earlville after talking to a man in Big Rock, where a companion commercial was filmed.  She told him she was looking for a “picturesque” small town as a location.

      “He said, ‘You gotta go to Earlville, ‘” she said.  She did so last week, and she liked the location.  She took photographs back to the producers at 59Films/MJZ Productions, and they decided to shoot the commercial here.

      Early Tuesday morning, the cast and crew of about 75 arrived in Earlville and started setting up the first of several scenes they shot that day - in which a car drives down the street and “spins out” while money falls from the sky.

      That scene was shot on Winthrop Street.  Police and ambulance crews were on site as a stunt driver sped down the street, hit the brakes, and spun the car around.  But there were no mishaps - in several takes, the driver brought the car to rest each time apparently exactly where it was supposed to be.

      Later in the day, the same car was filmed driving up Railroad Street, and again at the East Street railroad crossing (where a stop light was placed temporarily for the scene) - always with a flurry of money being dropped on or blown at it.

      The filming continued into the night, using lights and screens set up in front of the ambulance barn.  By midnight, the film crew had what it needed.

      Ms. Bulinski says the shoot went well and that the producers were happy with the results.
      City officials were satisfied with the handling of the project by the film crew.  After each scene was shot, the equipment was moved in to sweep up the play money, which had been blown across whole neighborhoods by the wind.

      Mayor Mike Hall said Wednesday that he thought the production, like another production shot in Earlville (for the movie “Looking for Normal”, starring Jessica Lange, in 2003) would benefit the city.

      “That’s just two we’ve had so far”, but they bring positive recognition to the town., he said.  He added that the city would receive compensation for its cooperation in the production.

      The city was offered a $500 location fee plus reimbursement for its expenses, according to the city officials.  Those expenses include the cost of having three police officers on duty all day, and assistance from the city’s public works department, which provided barricades for traffic control, temporarily removed banners from streetlights, and placed picnic tables at Dodge Park for the use of the film crew.

      The film crew also requested that three EMTs be present all day.  Ambulance Director Dick Wold said that the EMTs were there in shifts, from 5:30 a.m. until midnight.  According to Earlville Fire Chief Larry Todd, those EMTs were the Ambulance Service’s back up crew; the on-call EMTs were on duty as usual to respond to any other emergency incidents during the shoot.

      Residents and businesses whose property was used were also offered compensation.  (The Editor of this Newspaper was among those to receive compensation for the use of her property).

      The costs to be reimbursed by the production company are still being added up, but “there will be no cost to the city when it is all said and done, “ the Mayor said.

Residents Object

      Not everyone in Earlville wanted to participate in the making of a lottery commercial.  One Couple, Steve and Christie Bell, who declined in the offer to have their house used in the commercial, say they objected when the filming nevertheless began to involve their home on Winthrop Street.

      Mr. Bell said he and his family are interested in film making and would have  liked to be part of a commercial production, but he said they could not be involved in a commercial for the lottery.

      “It’s about personal convictions,” he said.  “The lottery just doesn’t help people. It takes money away from people, mostly poor people.  Half the people who win end up bankrupt or divorced.  It separates people from their money.”  He added that the promises that the lottery proceeds would support the schools have not been kept.  “They give the money to the schools, but then they take the other funding away from the schools.”

      He said he had explained his views to the location team in advance and they agreed to not include the Bell’s house in the commercial.

 But the spinout scene was shot in the street just a few feet from the Bell’s house, and the couple say it eventually began to involve their family, like it or not.

      “We didn’t care what they did on the street,” Mrs. Bell says.  But the problem came when her sons, who had been indoors all morning, went outside to play in their yard.

      Crew members said they did not want the boys and their friends playing so near the filming equipment, which included several overhead booms, and the stunt car, for safety reasons.  The Bells say the cameras were aimed in the direction of their house, which had been assured would not appear in the commercial.

      Mrs. Bell says several crew members, ordered the kids to go into the house, although she told them most of the boys playing there were not her children.  She says one crew member told her that She and her son had been filmed in the scene.

      “If our property  was not included in the scene, and we were on our porch, how could we have been shot in the scene?” she said.

 After what both sides said was an argument, the film crew decided to move to a different location, having already shot most of what they had planned at that location.

A Wrap after one day

      The one-day commercial shoot used a crew about half the size used to film a movie, according to Liz Goldsmith, the assistant location manager.  Their trucks and equipment filled several streets, and the City of Earlville cleared several blocks, declaring them no-parking zones starting the night before the shoot.

      But by the next morning, the only traces that remained of the production were the fake dollar bills littering the downtown streets and neighboring lawns.  A clean-up crew from the production company fanned out across town and gathered them up, leaving the city much as they found it.

      City officials and location managers are urging that residents make sure their children understand that any paper dollars or aluminum coins they may have found from the filming is not real money, and they should not try to use it to buy anything.

      The Mega Lotto commercial is expected to be seen on TV in about two months, according to Ms. Bulinski.