MovieChat Forums > Christmas with Holly (2012) Discussion > Did Not Look Like Western Washington AT ...

Did Not Look Like Western Washington AT ALL

posted 11 years ago by pokee999
14 replies | jump to latest

I watched this movie last night - cute...but I was irritated by the shooting location choice, since all the beach scenes looked more like the New England seaside - not the Pacific Northwest. We don't have houses like that on the water. And the beaches look different than the ones depicted in the movie. And the ferry even looked totally different than anything we have out here. Then I looked it up and found out they filmed it in Nova Scotia. I knew it was Canada, anyway, because I saw a CIBC sign in the opening sequence of the town scenes.

At least they faked the sunset correctly (I wasn't paying attention too closely, but they seemed to have got it right). That would've been a BIG boo boo if they hadn't.

[–] MsPeppermint 11 years ago

on behalf of nova scotia, thank you for liking our fake sunset.
we worked really hard to get the colors believable.

Get wet http://bit.ly/Dangerous-When-Wet ~ http://bit.ly/IceWater

[–] Val-El 7 years ago

LMAO!!! Cute reply!



[–] lakealice 11 years ago

I agree with you about the location--it looked like Maine rather than the Washington coast. Movies made in Canada always do that--the clothes, houses, scenery, etc just don't look like the U.S. Apparently. to save money, the filmmakers don't think it matters--but it does.

On a different subject, what was the point of Kate firing the woman who had decorated the shop?--I didn't see anything wrong with it, and didn't see that Kate improved it much, if at all. I thought that was a weak scene.

[–] zaphod-42 11 years ago

the point was that Kate had given specific directions on a number of things and within minutes the employee had changed a slew of them - signage, flooring, reading area, colour schemes - without checking at all with Kate.

It was pretty obvious that not only was the employee going to do what she wanted regardless of the boss's instructions but that the two of them had very different views on the look and feel of the shop.

Best for them to go their separate ways, that employee was never going to work under a boss.

[–] VariaIronhawk 11 years ago

And, she had worked for the last two shop owners, making me wonder if she was not part and parcel of the reason the previous shops failed.

I'm a bitey, Mad Lady or Sexy, because biting is like kissing except there's a winner.

[–] parisel 9 years ago

Who's Kate? Do you mean Maggie?

I guess it's like looking at clouds. You see one thing and I see another. Peace.

[–] Dan1863Sickles 11 years ago

Kate's firing the woman was just a standard dramatic way of saying, "there's a new sheriff in town," or to put it another way, "new broom sweeps clean." Ironically, if you read the novels of Lisa Kleypas (who wrote the novel this movie was based on) her heroines tend to be very, very wimpy and almost never assert themselves in any way -- so this was a real departure, and probably an attempt to "toughen up" the heroine for a "mainstream" audience.

"Your next challenge is always your biggest." Joe Namath

[–] asascy 11 years ago

I used to manage a store. The owner would have fired me too if I had taken as many liberties as she did. You do what the owner says, even if you are the manager. I cringed watching this, thinking, woman you are overstepping your bounds. I think it also opened the door for Kate to be spending a great deal of time in the shop to have the chances to interact with Holly. If she had a manager, she would not have needed to be there as often.

[–] IDream_ofJoaquin 11 years ago

I used to work on San Juan Island and the ferry they took in does not even exist!

[–] uwgrl24 11 years ago

They say that they filmed it in Nova Scotia but I think they filmed part of it in WA. The outside of the house the brothers lived in and the "beach" cove where the middle brother took his samples is on Whidbey Island at Ebey Landing/Penn Cove. I saw the house again last week driving through. Of course the house back to a grassy hillside and not the water. Another shot where Mark and Cloe are talking is also at Ebey Landing behind the pottery shop, San Juan de Fuca church and the fire station.---The ferries to San Juan travel out of Anacortes and are the Washington state ferries. There are smaller ferries that travel between the islands but I don't remember what they look like. The ferry did remind me of the "Black Ball" ferries out of Port Angeles that travel to Victoria. Parts of Whidbey Island and the San Juans and Port Townsand do look like new England towns.

[–] info-197-797505 9 years ago

I thought it looked like Whidbey, but the ferry and town are NOTHING like Friday Harbor or even San Juan Island. Any Washingtonian knows that the islands are all but boarded up past Labor Day, and no one in their right mind would open a business over Thanksgiving. I can't stand it when a location is misrepresented on film. Don't get me started on Twilight!

[–] info-197-797505 9 years ago

[–] sarahliz1624 9 years ago

It was very clearly the Atlantic rocky intertidal, but the average person who doesn't live in either area wouldn't notice.

[–] paula_audette 8 years ago

You are correct. I am a licensed geologist in the state of Washington, and an avid sea kayaker, who has kayaked all over Puget Sound, including the San Juan islands. I have been to Friday Harbor many times. First of all, the geology is wrong, as is the topography. Next, the beaches don't exist and are of the wrong type. The trees are also much too small and of the wrong species. And as has been remarked, the ferry is all wrong. The ferry that goes to Friday Harbor is very, very large. The smaller interisland ferries that are not run by the state do not look whatsoever like the ferry in the movie. The whole movie is basically a fraud. I can understand the need to film most of the action on a Canadian venue, but they could have at least given it a little realism by splicing in a couple of seconds of real Washington scenes. I HATE movies that don't take the time to make anything even remotely correct.