The Newport home of Howard and Nora Cushing was used in the filming of Evening.

It starts with surveillance.

Lisa Finn noticed that in Tiverton; so did Howard Cushing in Newport.

If you’re making a movie, you need a set. And if the set calls for a house, you need to find one, maybe two.

Evening enters Rhode Island.

The film, which officially opened across the country last Friday, was shot here last year.

But before there’s filming, there’s scouting, which sometimes seems like surreptitious reconnaissance.

A boat slowly motors by Cushing’s waterfront home. He sees people on its deck staring at him.

“They’re looking at the house through binoculars,” he says. “I thought, ‘What’s going on?’ ”

It’s the early stages of movie-making. And it happens in Tiverton, too.

A car stops in front of Finn’s house. A woman takes some pictures, puts a piece of paper in the mailbox and drives off. Finn sees this from her window, and goes outside.

It’s a note, an architectural appreciation, and an invitation: Your house has been selected to audition for a movie role.

“I’m a big fan of movies,” Finn says. “I called the woman on my cell phone minutes after she left.”

If you see Evening, you’ll see Finn’s house, which she shares with her husband John Foley. And you’ll see Cushing’s house, too, which he shares with his wife Nora.

Both houses are grand and stately. And in the film, both have prominent, though non-speaking roles.

Both houses exude character and bring ambiance to a story about love found and lost, and belatedly remembered. That’s Evening, based on the book by Susan Minot.

“I knew what the movie was about,” Finn says. “If it was a movie such as (fictitious) Saw 3, I probably would have wanted to think about it.”

As it turns out, at least with the crew that made this movie, “What’s there to think about?”

You’re paid a handsome rental for your home. You get to meet some major actors: Vanessa Redgrave, Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, among others. You can watch the whole movie-making process. You can get your floors refinished and your walls repainted or repapered. You can appear as extras in the movie. And, if you’re lucky, you can land a job in the film industry.

Jane Finn-Foley got lucky. The 25-year old daughter of Finn and Foley was hired as an assistant to the executive producer, and is now working on her third film.

“I totally jumped at the chance,” Finn-Foley says. “I thought it was so cool.”

Sometimes you hear about the hardships film crews can cause their hosts. But you hear none of that about Evening.

“It surprised me how pleasant it was to have them here,” Howard Cushing says. “They were so considerate. They even supplied someone to watch our dogs.”

That would be Alfie, the corgi, and Millie, the Bernese mountain dog.

The Cushings have a guest house, or annex, attached to their main house. So they didn’t leave their property during seven weeks of shooting last fall. The Finn/Foley family didn’t have that option. So last summer during filming, the film company put them up in another house nearby.

“We stayed in Little Compton,” Finn says. “It was rough living by the beach.”

The Finn/Foley house is a two-story, 3,000-square foot Colonial revival built in 1905. It has a back porch and a circular front driveway through a porte-cochere. The house has stained glass, crown molding and an extensively wood-worked foyer. It also has wide doorways and high ceilings, which film crews need for their equipment.

Some furniture and furnishings were taken out; some were brought in.

“They used all our books,” Foley says. “They just rearranged them.”

Walls were painted, wallpapered and, in one case, even temporarily created closing an opening between rooms.

“They changed our house,” Finn says.

A stairway runner was removed, revealing old, handsome wood steps beneath.

“It looks fabulous,” Finn-Foley says. “Why didn’t we do that before?”

On most days, certainly on Sundays, the film company’s day off, Foley visited his house.

“It wasn’t our home anymore,” he says. “It was someone else’s.”

It was the home of Redgrave’s character as an old, ill woman, which would explain some of the scenery. One day Foley was in the house during filming and walked into the kitchen, which was a mess, with egg shells and used tea bags on the counter.

“My first thought was, ‘Someone should clean this up.’ Then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. This is the kitchen of an old woman who’s dying.’ ”

The Finn/Foley family often watched filming. On one occasion, they saw their house filled with a special kind of smoke that made the sunlight look magical. On another, they saw a black tent erected on the side of their house that turned day into night inside the house.

The film crew painted over all the interior moldings with flat paint, which Finn-Foley as an industry insider can now explain.

“It’s for the camera. You don’t want anything too bright. If you’re an actor, you don’t want to be standing next to a cabinet that’s gleaming more than you are. ‘Behind Meryl Streep, do you see…’ ”

Not only did Finn-Foley work for the production company, but appeared in the movie, as an extra, in a wedding scene in Newport’s Rosecliff mansion. The experience sounds more glamorous than it was.

“You have to pretend you’re eating cake and drinking champagne, which is actually ginger ale. You have to do it for eight hours. And you have to pretend you’re talking without talking.”

There’s quiet on a set, which is why Finn-Foley sometimes missed a take or two during emotional scenes shot inside the house.

“I had to go outside. I began crying and sniffling.”

The Finn/Foley family saw the movie in its limited premiere screening last month in Newport, though concentrating on the story was hard for all of them.

In some scenes, Redgrave would be in bed, in the family’s living room, which was used as a bedroom in the movie and say she wanted to go downstairs.

“It was strange to see,” Foley says. “You are downstairs.”

The movie backgrounds, for people who know the background intimately, could be distracting.

“I would say, ‘Oh, that chair’s ours. And there are our dishes,’ ” Finn says.

The film company’s policy is at the end of filming in a house, any room it has painted or papered it will repaint and repaper in any color and style the owners wish. So the Finn/Foleys have one newly papered room and two newly painted ones. They have an entirely resurfaced first floor. They also have a gazebo the crew brought in and the Finn/Foleys chose to keep. They have a movie script signed by everyone involved in the shoot at their house. They have a signed photograph of Streep with Finn, too. And they have the bed where Redgrave’s character slept.

“I asked for it,” Finn says. “It’s a good memory.”

After the boat went by the back of his house, the next thing Cushing remembers is a knock on his studio door. It’s one of the directors of Evening, who wants to use Cushing’s house, an 1867, three-story, white-clapboard, stick-style beauty with a stunning wrap-around porch overlooking the ocean.

“I said absolutely not. But everyone has his price.”

About 20 years ago, the Cushings agreed to let their house be used for one scene in a film, and the experience, they say, wasn’t good. The Evening people, Howard Cushing says, were “really persistent,” and asked him to meet with them in their New York office.

“I was impressed. These people were different. It was so obvious these people were serious, and a class act.”

Howard Cushing says it didn’t matter what kind of movie they were making.

“It mattered more how they treated the house.”

Actually, it mattered to some extent. The Cushings do have some cinematic standards for their house.

“This is not a slasher-film location,” Howard Cushing says.

“We wouldn’t want any murder scenes in here,” Nora Cushing says. “That would give the wrong impression.”

The impression of the house, known as The Ledges, is of elegance and grace. It has 11.5 foot ceilings, and a vantage point in the living room where you can see all three sides of a wrap-around porch, where in the movie a couple danced, encircling the house.

The film company took out the family’s furniture and brought in its own. Besides changing the wallpaper in one bathroom, no other wall surfaces were changed. Scenes were shot outside, and on all three floors of the house, as well as in the adjoining guest house or annex.

“It turned out to be such fun,” Nora Cushing says. “We stayed. They let us have our friends come over and watch.”

The Cushings repeatedly resisted invitations to participate as extras in the movie’s wedding scene at Rosecliff, but finally acquiesced, one day spending from early morning to early evening on the set. All to shoot one scene.

“It was a little repetitive to say the least,” Howard Cushing says.

As with the Finn/Foley family, the Cushings attended last month’s premiere of the film, which Nora Cushing feels a need to see again.

“I was looking at the surroundings.”

brourke@projo.com