Build With Stone
In 1992, Natural Stone Company Inc. received a call from a filming director, Philip Haas.
He was directing a up coming film called the Music of Chance, And in the story line , the characters had lost a bet in a poker game, and to pay this debt off they had to build a stone wall.
The Filming Director’s needed a Stone Wall built that would be 8ft tall , 300 ft long, with a starting point at one end of 18” at the top and 3ft at the bottom. The movie would be filmed in Wallburg NC in a open field. After completing the filming of the movie, the stone wall had to be took down and the field left as if it was never there.
The Film Producer’s flew from New York , to our office here in Lewisville to choose the type of stone , The stone that was picked out to was Virginia Fieldstone. The Virginia Fieldstone that we had in stock on the yard had already been sold to a homeowner that we had contracted a job to install over 600 tons on a Stone Castle, for a home located in Winston Salem.
We contacted the owners of the stone, who were not ready for the installation of the stone on the house that was under construction, and the excitedly agreed to allow their stone to be used in the filming of the wall. With one condition, The stone had to be returned in the condition that it was in, so it could be used with the other stone for the stone castle.
So after careful thought, We came to the conclusion that the stone would have to be layed with sand, no mortar, since the wall had to be removed from the field and taken to the job site to start installation on the stone castle, Plus there was a scene in the movie where one of the actor’s after completing the wall would run all the wall down it, so it had to support the weight of him doing this retake over many times.
After all the conditions and agreements were met , We set out to build a stone wall that would become a symbol of our company, and a experience that Natural Stone Company Inc. and all the mason’s would never forget.
Before filming could begin, Our mason’s had to start by building the first corner of the wall, and wait for shooting to be over that day.
The actor’s were filmed during the day, to make it look as if they were working on sections of the wall. And at night under lights, our mason’s would add more sections to the wall, sometimes from 9pm until 3 am in the morning, to be ready for the next day’s filming.
Natural Stone Company Inc. and our Mason’s were invited to watch shooting take place during the day, where we got to meet many of the actors that starred in the film, such as Emmit Walsh, James Spader, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Penn, etc.
It took over 2 weeks, day and night to complete the wall. After shooting for the film was over, the filming company had brought in many kinds of foods and drinks for the cast and crew members, and for us and our mason’s. That day we got the chance to meet all of the actors, have pictures taken with them , get autographs.
Natural Stone Company Inc. had shirts made that said “ By Chance “ I helped build the wall, with a screen print logo of the wall on the back , That was given out to all member’s of our crew, The Filming Company, and Actor’s. Which many of our mason’s have still to this day . In return and with many Thanks, the Filming Company supplied Natural Stone Company Inc. 5 VHS tapes of the movie “ The Music of Chance “
After the movie company had cleared out , we began to tear down the wall stone by stone just like it was layed, where it was then put on trucks and delivered over to the Stone Castle job so we could begin installation on the house. The field had to be like the wall was never there, so we had to clean up and put down grass seed.
You can see the Stone Castle on our Homepage after 2 years of masonry services that Natural Stone Company completed. The wall that was built also became our logo, that is used on Natural Stone Company’s business cards, letterhead, invoices etc.
You can see pictures of the wall being built and completed ,etc in the photo galley at the top of the page,to the left.
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