When a film is made, sets are built and decorated to make a story seem real. And now in Massachusetts, when filming is done, those sets are having real-life impact, empowering people trying to rebuild their lives to design their own homes, free of charge.
Films start from nothing but an idea. If it’s set in a home, walls need to be found or built. And the rooms need to be filled.
“Say we’re decorating a dining room,” explained Melissa Cooperman, a set decorator and buyer for films and commercials shot in Massachusetts. “We’ll need a table, we’ll need chairs, carpet, dishes, glasses, artwork for the wall, lighting, curtains, and window treatments.”
When a film wraps, the producer needs to decide what to do with the accumulated stuff, often an abundance of home goods.
Cooperman worked on the 2014 television mini-series "Olive Kitteridge," which was shot on the North Shore and Cape Ann. It had a fully-furnished house and apartment, and fully-stocked drug store.
“They said they wanted to donate everything,” Cooperman recalled. “I knew we’d have truckloads going to great thrift stores, but I really wanted to find an organization that gave directly to people in need.”
Enter Project Home Again. Its 5,000 square foot warehouse is in the basement of an industrial building in Lawrence, packed as far as the eye can see. Though well-organized, there’s barely enough space to walk through. For 16 years, it’s been donating home goods to people trying to rebuild their lives. Since "Olive Kitteridge," it’s absorbed sets from over 20 films and 30 commercials shot in-state.
Project Home Again gets goods to where they’re most needed and wanted, partnering with about 400 social workers, founder and president Nancy Kanell said.
“They go to their clients’ homes with a checklist of everything that we stock. And they sit down with their clients and they go room by room, and decide what they need to make them feel comfortable,” Kanell said.
The social workers send the completed checklists to Project Home Again. Then the clients come in and take whatever they like.
“We want them to have a real sense of pride and ownership that they’ve created this nest for themselves,” Kanell said.
It can be overwhelming to furnish and decorate an entire apartment in two hours. For one thing, the warehouse contains a jumble of styles. Project Home Again gets everything from frilly, floral and country to modern and industrial stuff. So when clients come in, Kanell typically takes them over to home goods, where little vignettes reflect the different styles. The clients are encouraged to indicate what they like.
Project Home Again serves refugees, veterans, people transitioning from halfway houses, and survivors of domestic violence.
“When they come here,” Kanell said of the abuse survivors, ”we roll out the red carpet.” They’re invited to come during off-hours, Kanell said, because they’re often scared to be around other people and reluctant to accept a donation.
Kanell remembers one particular survivor: “She came on a day we were closed because she was very afraid of her own shadow at that point. And she just wanted beige. She said she didn’t like color, didn’t deserve color.”
Kanell and Cooperman found her a green chair.
“A green that people would be either very drawn to or very opposed to having in their home,” Kanell recalled. “But there was something about it she liked. She sat down on it.”
“Oh, that chair!” Cooperman gushed. “I think it was lime green and had some chocolate brown and a little turquoise?”
Kanell and Cooperman started pulling colorful rugs and a colorful table to go with the chair.
“We had chairs that were different colors, and we found colorful furniture for her child,” Kanell said. “And she was uncomfortable with it, but you could see she was starting to like it. And I made a deal with her that she could take it home, and if she didn’t like the color, I’d come and pick it up, and she could get all beige things. We even had colorful pots and pans for her! And she called about two weeks later. She said she and her son were so happy they were living in a colorful world, and it changed their outlook.”
Project Home Again hasn’t just been changing lives. It’s changed the industry as well. Many set decorators now have Nancy Kanell on speed dial so they can get rid of their stuff as quickly as possible.
And Kanell? With all her good fortune, one thing in life has gotten harder.
“I do not watch movies the same way anymore,” she said. “Set decoration has become for me one of the most paramount things in film. If I love a movie, I have to watch it twice now. The first time, I’m focused on the set decoration.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the location of Project Home Again's warehouse. It is in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They have a showroom in Andover.
