National Treasure at McKeldin.
A brief minor adventure occurred earlier this year when Hollywood showed up at the University of Maryland to shoot a scene in the building I work in. I was reminded of this when I saw that the movie is coming out on Friday. Normally, the McKeldin Library Special Events room looks like the first picture below. For a couple of days last April it looked like these following pictures.  The word was that it was set up to look like the interior of the Old Executive Office Building for a scene in the movie National Treasure II. I think they are looking for a lost book of Presidential secrets in this one. Or maybe a secret book of lost Presidents. Perhaps a book with the address of a legendary lost guitar maker. I might have to see the movie at some point and find out. The real Old Executive Office Building is a grey second empire building that sits to the immediate western side of the White House in Washington DC. I think the Vice President has his offices in that building. I've been in that building; my sister, Ann, had an office there when she was a deputy White House Counsel for Telecommunications. There was a two day load-in on a Thursday and Friday with the filming to occcur on the following Saturday. None of the principles, actors or directors, were around while I was there.  They were apparently with another unit filming elsewhere. Several strands of massive fire -hose sized power cables were snaked laboriously from a generator truck parked at the loading dock, to the back staircase all the way up to the sixth floor. Here they remade our empty room meticulously into another cubicled reality. Before taking it all apart again a few days later. By Monday it was all just a rumour. I believe this scene did make to the final cut
National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) - Filming locations. I was trying to get more detailed pictures, these were taken at around 5pm that Friday, but there were some people around who were giving me displeased looks. So I got a couple of quick shots and left. I was off on the weekend and didn't make back to campus, so I missed seeing the day of filming with Jon Voight and Nicolas Cage who were in that scene (It's not like Jon's daughter was going to be there). They also apparently filmed a brief outdoor scene on the fly. The area just outside McKeldin being used to stand-in for a scene at the University of Virginia. I have a vague recollection that the time of year in the story for these scenes was supposed to be late spring or summer, but I remember on that Saturday there was a near inch of snow on the ground when I got up that morning.
10:54:27 PM  ;;
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