2bU EXCLUSIVE Visiting the High School Musical 3 set
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Last updated 20:33:00 10/17/2008
MANILA, Philippines—At first sight, it looks like any high school in any mid-size American city: big and a bit grim, with yellow school buses parked outside. But East High in Salt Lake City is not any school; it is “the most famous high school in the world.” With good reason.
The hugely popular High School Musical films are set in New Mexico, any fan knows that. But when filmmakers went looking for the perfect real-life high school to serve as the fictional East High, they found exactly what they wanted not in New Mexico but in Utah.
The film on the singing, dancing exploits of the clean-cut captain of the Wildcats, Troy Bolton (Zac Efron), beautiful brainiac Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens) and scheming rich girl Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale) first aired on Disney Channel in 2006. Since then 250 million fans the world over have seen the films which have been translated in 24 languages.
The High School Musical phenomenon has also made East High Salt Lake City’s biggest tourist attraction. Its vice principal said that even on a quiet day, at least 20 people show up to be toured, eager to see Sharpay’s locker (in fact, a film prop, nothing real), drama teacher Mrs. Darbus’ classroom (where Troy is put in detention for using his mobile phone), and the school theater (where Troy and Gabriella do a romantic duet).
You can also rent the cafeteria for birthday parties and stand on the same spot where Gabriella got off to a bad start at East High by accidentally tipping her cheese nachos all over Sharpay’s designer jacket. Cafeteria bookings are months ahead, the demand shooting up when production began on “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” due in Philippine theaters next week—the first of the HSM films to open in cinemas, rather than TV.
You’d think fans wanting a guided tour would be given the brush-off, at least during filming. After all, producers are promising that HSM3 will be “bigger and better,” with the most elaborate dance numbers. But “bigger and better” also means more cameras, more equipment, more extras and more crew clogging up East High’s hallways.
On top of that, East High’s 2,000 student population was still in class when production of HSM3 got underway last May.
All these, however, were no reason to drive away tours. East High, in fact, was very hospitable. The lucky ones watched the filming and caught sight of Hollywood superstar Zac Efron and the rest of the gang in action.
There were ground rules, however. The film’s location manager Carole Fontana says, “We tell the girls, we’ll show you the set, but if you squeal, you’ll have to leave.” So zip the mouth, we did.
First stop was the school entrance hall—home to a life-size sculpture of a cougar, the mascot of the real East High. The lobby was a mystifying mix of movie props and real-life American school trappings. The Emergency Evacuation instructions were real, as well as the sign on library hours, posters on the walls (“Stand up for what is right, even if you’re standing alone;” “Life has rules. Play fair”). But the colorful, hand-made notice on the bulletin board inviting “serious students” to join Mrs. Darbus’ drama summer school was really HSM3.
Where Sharpay’s locker should be was a grubbier locker (No. B1-044) which the filmmakers replaced with the deluxe, Sharpay-ed version only during filming.
Inside East High’s theater, however, was the real thing: director Kenny Ortega and his star cast rehearsing onstage a scene featuring one of the new songs, “I Just Wanna Be With You.”
The rest of the landscape was sheer heaven for fans. East High’s premier choreographer Ryan Evans (played by actor Lucas Grabeel) and resident composer Kelsi (Olesya Rulin) were seated before a grand piano in the pit. Troy (Zac Efron) and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) were perched on the edge of the stage. Behind them were 40 or 50 dancers and extras, who all sprang to life when Kenny Ortega shouted “Action!”
Efron posed for a picture with a fan between takes, and Hudgens sweetly rearranged a strand of Efron’s otherwise perfect and incredibly famous hair. The two stars then stood before a video monitor to watch a playback of the scene they had just done.
“The first time I read the script, my immediate reaction was that it would be a great legacy for the Wildcats to leave behind,” said Efron in our interview, as polite off-screen as on-screen. “It sums up a lot of storylines and all the characters really grow. There are also a lot of great songs and every different kind of music, from rock to R&B; pop and solo and group numbers and romantic duets.”
What the plot is, no one really talked, beyond the fact that this being senior year, the kids don’t have much on their minds apart from college applications and the prom. Jock-turned-thespian Troy could be facing a choice between a career treading the boards and basketball. Gabriella could be leaving school early, and Sharpay’s still a diva.
Whatever the story, however, the really big news about the film may simply be the ramping up of the franchise’s production values as it jumps onto the big screen.
The cast had five weeks’ rehearsal, they had only two weeks in the previous two. The shoot ran to 45 days (24 for the previous two), and there are 2,500 extras in one of the film’s opening sequences.
It’s all a far cry from the first HSM when a rooftop scene was simply cut short because of a thunderstorm, and HSM2 when the props department painted a black grand piano white so it could be used in different scenes.
But still, this filming was far from Hollywood excess. None of the cast had a fancy trailer and at lunch, they all lined up with the crew. No personal chefs around here. Teen idol Efron rode, not a limo, but a minibus he’d happily share with any crew needing a lift back to the hotel.
“I don’t care about outdoing ourselves on this film, I’m not worried about being bigger and better,” says producer Bill Borden. “The point is to stay true to the spirit of the first two films, though of course, there are certain things that make sense when you’re making a film for cinema. We have a few more dancers; more money to spend on sets, that sort of thing.”
In the first film, when Gabriella and Troy were in the East High theater, there was a moon hanging behind them, which was all we could afford. Now we have sets with things that move in from the wings, things that fly up, more like Broadway.”
More amazing than any of that, however, is how a modest cable movie spawned an industry of sequels, hit albums, stage shows, merchandising and fan hysteria.
Back on the set, it was nearing the end of another shooting day, and Ortega and the cameras had moved to the East High gym where the Wildcats have one last championship game to play, against—who else?—their old rivals at West High. It’s the real-life East High basketball team, in blue uniforms, playing the fictional West High Knights. Efron and his HSM teammates were in red shirts of the Wildcats.
Zac and co-star Corbin Bleu chatted, laughed and spun basketballs on their fingers while waiting for the cameras to roll. When Kenny Ortega finally shouted “Action!”, the huge crowd of extras roared. The scoreboard said—Wildcats 64, Knights 65, with just eight seconds to go. Troy Bolton was about to make the most important shot of his life.
What happens next? Our lips are zipped.
Will the Wildcats win another championship? Will Sharpay stop behaving like a diva? Will HSM3 take the big-screen by storm?
Grab a bag of popcorn.
High School Musical 3, which is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International, opens in theaters on Oct. 24.
