Welcome to Mooseport (2004)

WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT was filmed on location in and around Toronto, Canada. Approximately 30 different sets and locations were utilized, from a stately 13 acre lakeside heritage property (circa 1860s) which doubled as the President’s Mooseport White House, to the charming and picturesque town of Port Perry, which proved the perfect setting for Mooseport itself.

“We did a lot of research on what little towns in Maine look like,” says production designer David Chapman. “We must have scouted over half a dozen towns and looked at photos of dozens more before settling on Port Perry, and it proved to be just perfect; it has a lake, beautiful streets and homes, and it’s sweet enough without being too saccharine. It looks like real people live there.”

The art department used signage, paint and ingenuity to transform Port Perry’s main street into a small East Coast American town. Bronze plaques, a bronze moose statue, and red, white and blue bunting changed the Port Perry Post Office into the Mooseport Town Hall; colorful banners were strung up and down the street heralding the arrival of the former President; and Mooseport’s mascot, Bruce the Moose, took up residency in a small park beside the bank. “Port Perry has a charm and ambience that one rarely finds these days,” says Chapman. “It was clear from the moment we saw it that wherever the director pointed the camera, it was going to look terrific”

Costume designer Vicki Graef’s work adds to the small-town, Americana feel. For inspiration, she turned to the work of Norman Rockwell. “I wanted an all-American look and thought what better place to begin than with Norman Rockwell paintings,” says Graef. “The jacket that Ray is wearing is an exact copy from a Norman Rockwell painting titled ‘Freedom of Speech.’ I also decided early on that I wanted the look to be timeless and classic, rather than getting trendy or urban. Mooseport is a small, rural town where practical clothing reigns.”

“I based the color palette for the wardrobe on the colors in Rockwell’s paintings and found that really helped to separate the two camps,” adds Graef. “For the most part, we used rich fall colors such as red, teal, hunter green and chocolate brown on the Mooseport townsfolk, and crisp, cool colors for everyone else. So when the people from Washington show up in Mooseport in their sleek, starched, blacks and light blues and sparkly whites they really stand out like sore thumbs in this warm, comfortable, rumpled little town.”

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