The Cranston Street armory has been abuzz with activitiy as a sound stage for the live-action movie about the 1960s canine hero.

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, April 4, 2006

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

PROVIDENCE -- A plywood mockup of the State House dome sits on wheels in the middle of the space where soldiers from another century once marched in formation at the Cranston Street Armory.

Nearby stands a replica of the first floor of a Providence house. It's surrounded by a huge, 360-degree canvas curtain, the side facing the house painted to look like the neighborhood of the real house, which is not far from here.

An interior staircase goes to a second floor that doesn't exist. At least not here.

The castle-like yellow brick Cranston Street Armory, built between 1903 and 1907 as a home for the Coast Artillery Corps, has been turned into a 21st-century movie studio for the Disney film Underdog, which begins shooting Thursday.

According to Jerome Williams, director of the state Department of Administration, the state accelerated its maintenance plan for repairs at the armory and spent $2.48 million on them.

Seamstresses sew costumes in the basement, storyboards line an office wall. There's a screening room to watch dailies and a sound stage where several sets have been under construction since the start of the year.

Underdog is a live-action version of the '60s TV cartoon series about a beagle that develops super powers. The scenes that will unofficially begin production Thursday involve a burglary and will employ stunt doubles. Production officially starts Monday on locations around the city.

Many scenes are planned for the real State House, but Todd Arnow, the film's executive producer and its on-site production chief, wouldn't say exactly where else Underdog will be shooting between Monday and its finish date, July 21. He didn't want crowds arriving early and blocking the movie crews at work. But he did say that whenever and wherever the filmmakers turned up around the city, the public wouldn't be able to miss them.

Arnow projects more than $40 million will be pumped into the local economy by the time filming ends in July.

Arnow and a crew of about 10 arrived Jan. 10 at the armory. Since then, the filmmaking team has grown to about 300, using space on the first floor and basement for offices and movie sets. The top two floors of the building are walled off because they have been deemed unsafe.

Of the 300 people working here, Arnow said it's split about 50-50 between New Englanders and those from California and New York. "I'd say the bulk of the local workers are in construction and electrical work," Arnow said yesterday.

All the sets are on the armory's first floor in what was known as the Drill Shed, save for a large contemporary office set built in the basement. Arnow said it will be used for "an action sequence with a lot of fun gags."

Underdog is set in a place called Capitol City. Arnow said "the first and foremost" reason the film company chose Providence as a location was the State House. "It's an integral part of our story. We had visited capital buildings in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto and we looked at pictures of buildings in Australia and New Zealand." Rhode Island's huge marble dome came out on top, although it won't be quite the same view Rhode Islanders are familiar with. A detailed color picture on one of the film company's office walls shows the back side of the State House, the one with all the steps, with towering skyscrapers rising behind it. These will be added later by the visual effects department.

Other important reasons for coming to Rhode Island, he said, were that the state gave the filmmakers free use of the State House and the armory, plus the 2005 legislation that gave film companies tax credits. The law grants filmmakers a credit against state corporate income taxes of up to 25 percent of the total production budget. "This would be worth to us in the neighborhood of $7 million," Arnow said. "It mirrors the tax credits they give in Louisiana," a state that has in the past several years blossomed as a filmmaking mecca.

"Those three things combined made it very advantageous to shoot the film here," he said. "If we weren't here, we'd probably be in Montreal."

It's not all on the plus side for the Disney crew, however. One advantage that Canada has, besides its favorable exchange rate, is that it has developed an infrastructure to support filmmakers. This includes not only sound stages, but easy availability of cameras, film processors and craftspeople. "For a movie of this scope and scale," said Arnow, "there's not yet that infrastructure here. We still have to bring in certain people and things." He pointed to the lights over one of the sets, hanging from metal rigging. At this point, he said, the state didn't have the money to reinforce the armory's ceiling over the Drill Shed to enable the crew to hang lights, as they would be in a real movie studio.

"So we had to spend considerable money renting the rigging," he said.

"If another big production wanted to come in at the same time as us," added Arnow, "I don't know where they would put them. The Brotherhood [the Showtime TV series that shot in Providence recently] was here, but their needs were quite small."

(The final day of shooting for the CBS-TV pilot Waterfront was yesterday, but it was shot mostly in such locations as Providence City Hall, Capriccio and Hemenway's restaurants, the State House and the Barrington waterfront.)

Arnow said his film crew is "making do" with the armory, "but we could use extra space."

State-financed repairs at the armory, said Arnow, included sprinklers, a fire-detection system, shoring up the floors and an upgrade of the electrical system, "although we still had to bring in our own power" as a supplement.

The production crew also added a new phone system at its own expense, he said.

The filmmaking crew, led by Belgian-born director Frederik DuChau, who did the hit fantasy film Racing Stripes, had to get the sets ready early because the armory is not soundproofed and they couldn't have hammering going on during filming.

The filmmakers, explained Arnow, are using the armory sets as cover locations for when it rains. For instance, they'll film the outside of the real Providence houseand then shoot the interiors on the armory replica when the weather turns nasty.

He figures that of the 80 days of work in the city, only 20 will be on the sets. The visual effects will be done in London. He declined to say what the film's budget is.

Four lemon beagles, so named because they don't have dark spots, will portray Shoeshine, the pup that becomes Underdog. Each has his own movie specialty, although Leo will play the "main hero dog." They've been in Rhode Island since late February to get used to working on the sets.

The principal actors include Peter Dinklage, currently in Find Me Guilty, who will play the villain; Alex Neuberger, 13, recently seen in Running Scared, is Shoeshine's owner; and Taylor Momsen, 12, best known for Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, will play the boy's friend.

mjanuson@projo.com/ (401) 277-7276