Breaking Dawn Baton Rouge Filming: Refreshing, Frustrating, or Infuriating

The running joke among the Lexicon staffers is that they are filming Breaking Dawn in the Stalag 17 set. If you have ever seen the movie you’ll understand why. The complex where they are shooting at the Celtic Media Center in Baton Rouge is surrounded by a big fence and has lots of cinder-block type buildings with no windows.  The grounds are patrolled by a top notch security team. Seriously, all they are missing is the roaming searchlights and a couple of snarling German shepherds. You need ID and authorized clearance just to get on the property.

So the long and short of it is, other than for one brief instance when they prepped the Volturi outside and another brief instance when they shot at a local public park(which only yielded photos of shrubs and a giant green screen), no one has been able to see anything in Louisiana, because nothing has been in public view. The only shots we’ve seen are those out of Brazil that were taken by the flotilla off shore in public waters or by those residents in Rio who observed filming from their apartments or on public land by the marina district.

The ladies over at Letters to Twilight even recently commented on it. “BREAKING NEWS: Still no new set pictures or actual evidence that they’re doing anything in Baton Rouge. SHOCKING”

Cast sightings are occasionally posted on Twitter, like Robert Pattinson seen jogging in the university area and other cast members out on the town dancing, but overall there doesn’t seem to be the wild frenzy in Baton Rogue that there was in Vancouver with a bevvy of photographers camped outside their lodgings and then chasing them all over town from Starbucks to dinner events. One of our other running jokes is, “Oh look, Kellan goes to Starbucks day 92.” We actually found the turn for the hotel where we were supposed to meet for our New Moon set visit because we had seen just that many photos of the distinctive Starbucks on the corner and knew we were close.

In fact Ted Casablanca’s team over at E! Seems to have been thwarted when they attempted to get some dirt on a cast members’ night out. “No, sorry but we have bigger things to worry about than them…like the economy.”—Spokesperson for Tsunami restaurant in Baton Rouge, La., when we called to see if Hollywood Life’s item about Robert Pattinson‘s “wild, boys’ night out” had any truth to it.”

It’s pretty different from the response in Vancouver where the restaurant dished on …well…frankly what the cast dished on.

On the other hand, Bill Condon seems to do better than David Slade in the communication and photo department. We’ve gotten 3 official stills instead of crew members throwing fish in lakes.

So how do you feel about the lack of coverage: Refreshing, Frustrating, or Infuriating?