Filming for the production began in South Carolina in February 2007. In early April, the company moved to North Carolina, where it completed the remainder of the shoot. Initially, Leatherheads was based out of Greenville, South Carolina, the home of a BMW test track. A cavernous, former BMW warehouse became home to the production office, the wardrobe and art departments and a few sets. Several tiny outlying towns provided locales for the rest of the South Carolina photography. The company was even more mobile in North Carolina, moving from Charlotte to Winston-Salem to Statesville over the course of a month and a half.
The Carolinas offered multiple attractive elements, as producer Grant Heslov points out. The most attractive of all was the production's interest in not freezing to death. He provides, "The movie takes place in the Midwest, and football is obviously played from the fall into the winter. We needed that skyline, but we were also going to be shooting for a number of months. If we had gone to the Midwest in February to film these scenes, we would have frozen. The climate was more temperate in the Carolinas, though we did have our share of cold days and nights."
Weather was not the only factor. "We also needed period trains and railroads," he continues. "That's how the teams traveled, and we had access to several of those in North Carolina. Additionally, we needed football fields that didn't look contemporary, and there were several stadiums and schools that provided those settings and afforded us adjacent areas for support vehicles and trucks and trailers. Plus, there are film incentives in both states. All in all, it was ideal."
The small towns in South and North Carolina generously supported the production. The tiny city of Greer, its storefronts virtually unchanged since the 1920s, allowed the crew to redress façades, even offering up one shop as a set. Leatherheads filmed there for several nights, virtually shutting down the village. In Statesville, North Carolina, where the production ended its journey, the company revamped the historic Vance Hotel, built in 1921; a scene was even rewritten to make use of the hotel's subterranean swimming pool.
Across the street, the imposing Richardsonian Romanesque-style government building served as a set for several scenes, and the nearby civic center became the base for catering and support vehicles. Some of the sequences shot in Statesville required rain, so the special effects department lugged in rain towers, to the awe of the crowd of fans who regularly appeared to watch the goings on.
Throughout the Carolinas, the filmmakers found several stadiums that were built in the 1920s. The trick was to populate them with fans, especially as Carter Rutherford's amazing plays and star quality begin to draw respectable crowds to the new pro-football league games. While more than 200 extras signed up to boo and/or cheer, the shots had to be designed with visual effects in mind. As the sport's popularity increases throughout the film, so does the size of the crowd and stadiums. The art department would build the façade of a huge brick stadium entrance, for instance, but effects supervisor TOM SMITH and his department would augment everything in postproduction. While all this "digital football" was a challenge, it was made much easier by the elaborate storyboards Clooney used and made available to all the crewmembers.
Clooney film veterans, production designer Jim Bissell and costume designer Louise Frogley, were in sync with their respective specialties. This partnership was especially evident in scenes shot at the Calhoun Hotel in South Carolina. This 1920s era hotel was being converted into condominiums until Leatherheads persuaded the real estate agents to delay construction so that the production could film there. The Calhoun provided the setting in which our four principal characters-Dodge, Lexie, Carter and CC-meet for the first time.
Bissell's selection of muted tones, vintage mahogany furniture and delicate wall murals-based on John Matthew's illustrations from the 1920s-provided the perfect contrasting backdrop for Lexie's entrance, arriving as she does in a knockout red dress. The impeccable Frogley designed the wardrobe to be as authentic as possible, and that meant using clothing and fabrics from the era.
On Bissell: "We wanted the look and feel of a classic comedy, as opposed to gritty realism-which meant controlling the palette. And in that set, in particular, the tones were very muted, but still authentic. The colors were of the period, and we tried to use real vintage products-from furniture to newspapers and graphics of the era."
In all sets, while hues were subdued, there were always pops of color agreed upon by the design team. Renée Zellweger's crimson dress and hat were reflective of the dyes available in that era and inspired by legendary performer Clara Bow. Adds Frogley, "George really wanted a red dress for that sequence. I worked closely with Jim to make sure the dress would work. It was successful, and she certainly made a memorable entrance." Because the film was shot with a digital intermediate, Clooney would further be able to refine the contrasting colors of set and costume in postproduction.
Zellweger was well familiar with costumes of this period, as she had recently portrayed Mae Braddock in 2005's critically acclaimed period drama Cinderella Man. "Louise has embraced a part of American history we don't necessarily see often celebrated in films," she complements. "With throwbacks to the '20s, you sometimes imagine desperation and destitution-people throwing together what they can. She's really celebrated the Roaring '20s, where people were thriving and embracing the vivacity of American culture."
For her men, the designer gave Clooney a wardrobe that moved from scruffy and "pretty beat up in the beginning" to classic woven fabrics that were "better when his fortunes improve." Krasinski donned lighter-weight fabrics and slightly sportier styles, indicative of a bit of wealth from the era.
Costume and production design assimilated again on the football field. In the blunt cold of a winter field, the only color came from the scratchy woolen uniforms- often the Bulldogs' trademark blue and gold-and the advertisements lining the stadiums. As Bissell points out, the signs helped the characters' throughlines. "Commercial art is very evocative of the period," he offers. "In Princeton, where Carter first plays ball, there are no commercial signs, because it is a college game. Then, at the Bulldogs' early games, you see worn-out, local advertisements-even an old poster of Dodge at the entrance of the Duluth stadium hawking MoonPies." As Carter (and the cash) start coming to the Bulldogs, national advertising starts pouring in and, says Bissell, "the money becomes huge, and the signs become almost cacophonous."
For the meandering His Girl Friday-type newsroom at the Chicago Tribune, where Lexie reads her colleagues up and down and left and right, Bissell and Clooney made good use of the nooks and crannies, corridors and doorways to comedic and, sometimes poignant, effect. Not only does Lexie get her plum assignment there, she falls hard for Dodge in the office.
Perhaps the toughest production challenge was to build an interior train set (created to scale) that needed to replicate vintage locomotives that would have crisscrossed the country with Dodge, Carter, Lexie and the players. Bissell's train sat on risers that rocked when Clooney needed to mimic motion on a railroad. It was complete with wild walls that could be moved and rearranged to accommodate a variety of shots and cameras, even one attached to the end of a crane. Toward the end of filming, the crew shot key interiors on moving, period-correct trains, courtesy of the North Carolina Train Museum.
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