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But as the only child of the President of the United States, every detail of Anna's life is constantly monitored by the media, the public and her very protective parents — who are backed up by a battalion of Secret Service agents that safeguard Anna from any danger, including the perils of first dates.

Charming and irreverent, Anna just wants the freedom to live life like any other teenager — which means ditching the agents who are seriously curbing her good times. While on a diplomatic trip to Europe with her parents, Anna extracts a promise from her father, the President, which allows her a night alone, unescorted. But when her dad has a change of heart, Anna decides to take things into her own hands. In a wild escape, incognito Anna meets mysterious stranger Ben Calder (MATTHEW GOODE), who reluctantly aids her European getaway.

Reveling in her newfound independence, Anna decides to take Europe by storm, accompanied by dashing Ben. As Anna's madcap European adventure takes her farther from her family and brings her closer to Ben, she's dreading the day her holiday will come to an end.

Because the most powerful man in the free world is her father, Anna knows that she has a lot more to worry about than getting grounded. But before she can face the President, she has to find a way tell Ben the truth about her identity and risk getting her heart broken -- the one thing her father can't fix. -- © Warner Bros.

PRODUCTION NOTES

Eighteen-year-old Anna Foster (MANDY MOORE) just wants the American dream: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. At the very least, she wants the freedom to live like any other teenager.

But as the only child of the President of the United States, every detail of Anna's life is constantly monitored by the media, the public and her very protective parents - backed up by a battalion of Secret Service agents dedicated to safeguard her from danger, including the perils of first dates.

While on a diplomatic trip to Europe with her parents, Anna exacts a promise from her father for a rare evening out alone, unescorted by the usual security detail. It's a little taste of the freedom she's been longing for. But when over-protective Dad has a last-minute change of heart and reneges, Anna decides it's time to take matters into her own hands, ditches the agents and goes on the run.

In her wild escape, incognito Anna meets charming Brit Ben Calder (MATTHEW GOODE), who aids her European getaway.

Reveling in her newfound independence, Anna decides to take Europe by storm, accompanied by Ben and always a step ahead of her zealous bodyguards. As her impromptu European adventure takes her farther away from a life of protocol and draws her closer to her dashing young traveling companion, she dreads the day she has to tell Ben who she really is and go back home.

But Ben has a secret of his own.

Alcon Entertainment Presents a Trademark Films Production, a film by Andy Cadiff: Mandy Moore and Matthew Goode in Chasing Liberty, a young adult romantic comedy starring Jeremy Piven, Annabella Sciorra, Caroline Goodall and Mark Harmon. Directed by Andy Cadiff and written by Derek Guiley & David Schneiderman, the film is produced by David Parfitt, Broderick Johnson and Andrew A. Kosove. Wayne Rice is executive producer, Kira Davis and Steven P. Wegner are co-producers. Director of photography is Ashley Rowe, BSC; production designer, Martin Childs; and editor, Jon Gregory, A.C.E. Music is by Christian Henson. Chasing Liberty will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. This film is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for "sexual content and brief nudity."

Can't a Girl Get a Little Privacy?

"Anna Foster hasn't had any breathing room in her life or any time alone," says Mandy Moore with genuine understanding of her character's frustration. "At 18, she's at a transitional stage in her life, a time when every girl starts to look toward her future as a woman and craves some independence and freedom. She wants to be trusted to make her own decisions. It's what all kids have to go through at a certain stage."

Exacerbating Anna's situation is that fact that, as the daughter of a president serving his second term, she's done all her growing up in the public eye, her every move monitored not only by her parents but also by their security staff. It's not every father who can track his daughter's movements by stealth helicopter or have her dates strip-searched at the front door - and President James Foster, with all the best intentions in the world, will do exactly that and more if it means protecting his only child from whatever evils lurk out in the world, real or imagined. "Anna feels that the time has come for her to take a stand," says Moore. "She's lived her life in a bubble for 18 years and now it's going to pop."

Screenwriting team Derek Guiley and David Schneiderman first got the idea for their story while watching a Stanford basketball game and seeing then-First Daughter and Stanford undergrad Chelsea Clinton in the stands, being hounded by cameras. "She was trying to live the life of a normal college student, despite the fact of who her father was," says Guiley. "You knew that nearby there must have been Secret Service agents watching her every move. We couldn't help but imagine how frustrating it must be for someone to go through his or her teenage years like that. It's not something she asked for, but something she was stuck with." Adds Schneiderman, "we wondered what her life would be like behind the curtain, and that's what the story is about."

Moore, who was 19 during production on Chasing Liberty, finds Anna's situation "entirely relatable." A successful singer and actress at an early age, she has lived in the spotlight since her teens and managed her fame with grace. Her 1999 debut CD, So Real, was released when she was just 15 and went platinum in three months.

"Mandy became a household name at a very early age," notes Chasing Liberty director Andy Cadiff. "She had to cope with celebrity and learn to deal with adults in a professional way while she was still a kid, and yet she has maintained a sunny outlook on life." Calling Moore's participation "dream casting," Cadiff says, "we needed someone who brought a sense of innocence and exuberance to the role, as well as sophistication, and Mandy has all of that in spades."

Producer Andrew A. Kosove, who was particularly impressed with the actress' poignant performance in the recent coming-of-age drama A Walk to Remember, says, "Mandy is enthusiastic and vivacious, but also a young woman who has seen the world and gained the perspective and poise that comes with that, which makes her believable as the First Daughter. Honestly, there is no one else we considered for the part. If we hadn't gotten Mandy we probably wouldn't have made the movie."

Moore, who makes her romantic comedy debut in Chasing Liberty, acknowledges the parallels between her own life and that of her character, but feels that Anna's situation is not unique to celebrities or children of public figures. "It's universal," she says, "finding yourself, struggling with independence. When I got involved in the project I decided against doing a lot of research about presidential families because I believe Anna is no different than any other 18-year-old girl. She is who she is, and being the daughter of the president is just part of her circumstances - it's external. What's important to her is what is happening inside."

As hard as it is for kids to grow up and go out on their own, it's equally difficult for the parents who love them to let them go - another universal theme explored in Chasing Liberty by Mark Harmon's portrayal of President Foster as a man who knows that raising a child can be a lot tougher than his day job.

"As a parent," says Harmon, "you try to give your kids independence and the opportunity to experience things for themselves. With Foster, he has all kinds of security concerns the average family doesn't have to think about so the stakes are obviously higher. His challenge is to be a dad while his real job is to be the leader of the free world."

In casting President Foster, Cadiff was looking for just the right blend of elements. "We want people to laugh and have fun watching the movie, but within that context there has to be a believable structure of the First Family and that lifestyle," he says. "We needed a man who can carry the weight of being presidential but also has the ability to be light and affable. For me the model is Jack Kennedy, who could joke and be personable but always had that commanding presence. We were lucky with Mark - he's charming, witty, warm and he keeps a fast pace, which is what you would expect from a seasoned politician."

Harmon examined tapes of U.S. presidents and world leaders to prepare, and watched British newscasts intently to get a sense of Tony Blair's statesmanship. "I enjoy studying the tapes, doing my homework," discloses the actor, who once took a college history course on the Rhetoric of Churchill, "not only about Americans but public and political personalities around the world, to see the public image they present and then consider how they might behave candidly in a family situation."

As Anna's mother, Caroline Goodall provides a balance between the increasingly rebellious girl and her overly protective father. Goodall, who co-starred with Mandy Moore in Moore's first feature, The Princess Diaries, researched her First Lady role by reading about Jacqueline Kennedy's and Hilary Clinton's White House years and notes their "dedication to protecting their children, from the press and public" as much as possible. "On the other hand," she offers, "Anna's mother's sympathies are really with her daughter. She's been there. She understands that need to break out. She feels that if they try to be too tough with Anna, they might lose her."

When the family travels to Prague so President Foster can take part in the annual G8 Summit, Anna dutifully participates in all the diplomatic PR, says the right things and poses for the right pictures, after which she feels she's earned a little time off for good behavior. Maybe she'll take in that Love Parade in Berlin that she's heard so much about. Nothing doing, says Dad, who considers the Love Parade "basically just an orgy" and the last place on earth for his daughter. As a compromise, he reluctantly agrees to allow her a night out without the usual restrictive supervision so Anna can take in the opera with her old friend Gabrielle (BEATRICE ROSEN), the French Ambassador's daughter, whom she hasn't seen in several years and who her parents remember fondly as "Pierre's little girl."

Well, tongue-studded wild child Gabrielle has certainly grown up. And the opera isn't really the opera - it's the Opera Club, a hot underground hip-hop club that's sure to be dark, loud and teeming with strangers, none of which sounds good to Dad. But before he can veto the evening, the two girls are out the door in their most outrageous party clothes, so he does the next best thing - he sends a battalion of secret service agents after them to run interference.

At the club, where alternative jazz/fusion hip-hop group The Roots plays to the more-than-capacity crowd, Anna soon discovers that the only thing these agents are shielding her from is every cute guy who tries to ask her to dance. Anna is livid. Her father lied to her. He promised her a night of freedom and now she sees that it's just business as usual. It's time to take a stand and it has to be right now.

With Gabrielle's help, the over-protected First Daughter makes a quick wardrobe change and slips past her bodyguards. Spotting a Vespa curbside (in the possession of an exceptionally cute guy, she can't help noticing) she works the damsel-in-distress angle and, moments later, makes a speedy getaway on the back of the scooter, leaving the club and her cloistered life behind. It's not that she's running away from home forever...she'll be back, eventually, and on her own terms. But for the moment, she just wants to get away for a few days to see what life is really like.

Oh yeah, and she's going to the Berlin Love Parade!

It's a spontaneous awakening, as Moore describes the moment. "She's just so startled and surprised and in awe of her surroundings. She can't take it in quickly enough. This is the first time that this young woman is just by herself with no one looking after her or telling her what to do; no schedule, no plan. This is not how the night was meant to turn out, it just happened, but she was ready for it. I think she's excited by the prospect of having no plan and making things up as she goes along."

Romance on the Run

Anna may not have a plan, but it soon appears that Daddy does. That handsome devil with the Vespa who fortuitously appeared right when she needed him is actually Ben Calder (MATTHEW GOODE), a young British field agent for the Secret Service with an impeccable record. His attentiveness to Anna is just his work ethic. Ben's new assignment, under direct order from the American president, is to pretend to be a regular guy and hang with the First Daughter until she gets this little independence thing out of her system and wants to come home.

"Matthew is a London stage actor," Kosove says, regarding Goode's casting. "He came to Los Angeles to read with Mandy and just blew the competition away. He's genuinely funny, self-assured, witty and undeniably handsome; everything you look for in a leading man. Plus, he's British." Adds Cadiff, "We were looking for an English actor for the part, to be true to the story, rather than cast an American and teach him the accent."

As for the fact of Ben's employment, Oscar-winning producer David Parfitt (Shakespeare in Love) confirms that "the American Secret Service has local agents in virtually every country where Americans have a presence so it's completely credible that an Englishman like Ben Calder would be working in cooperation with White House staff away from home."

Still, Anna's mother isn't at all sure this is the way to go, pointing out to her husband that it was his lack of trust in Anna that led to this rebellion in the first place, but the president is resolute. He has the perfect plan: the illusion of freedom, minus the pitfalls. "There are only two things you need to do," he orders Calder. "Keep her completely safe at all times and make sure she has no idea who you are."

Ben hates it. This is not why he signed up for the service. It's a babysitting gig, pure and simple. Clearly, there are better uses for his talent than to supervise some precious spoiled brat with a whim to go slumming. "He thinks it's going to be a nightmare," says Goode, playing the reluctant knight to Anna's princess. "He also thinks it won't be long before she tires of clubs and street life and longs for the warmth and satin sheets of her luxury hotel. Turns out he's wrong on both counts."

Most of all, Ben is wrong in expecting Anna to be a spoiled brat. To his surprise, she's actually quite charming, spirited, resourceful and funny, "though stubborn as a mule" he claims, when it comes to accepting his sensible suggestions, like the one he makes about calling it a night right before she throws off her clothes and goes for a midnight dip in the Vltava River. This is a girl who's trying to get away from people telling her what to do, so the last thing she needs is another keeper, no matter how cute he is. And the last thing she wants to do is go home.

"Ben's job," as Goode wryly describes, "is to be charming and keep his identity a secret while staying in constant touch via cell phone with the agents who are tailing them, not to mention the president of the United States, and let Anna have her fun while making sure she doesn't get herself into trouble. All in all, it's exhausting and involves a lot of running around. Trust me."

When Anna takes her swim, Ben is duty-bound to slog in after her and cover her up so she doesn't catch cold or - worse - attract a crowd. When she climbs a rooftop for a better view of a street theater performance, he clambers up after her, all the while muttering darkly to himself about re-thinking his career path. And when she announces that she's heading for the Love Parade in Berlin, he has no choice but to buy a train ticket and try to enjoy the ride.

Still, as much trouble as she causes him, Ben has to admit he enjoys Anna's company and her zest for life. She makes the cynical and work-obsessed agent see things in a fresh way. From Anna's point of view her new traveling companion is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and somewhat ill tempered but overall not a bad sport. Besides, he has a delicious sense of humor - when he allows it to show - and the most soulful eyes.

By the time they realize they may have some very strong feelings for one another, Anna is afraid to tell Ben who she really is and he's doubly afraid to tell her who he really is.

Meanwhile, their blossoming romance is contagious.

As Anna and Ben wend their circuitous route in the general direction of Berlin, the First Daughter's devoted bodyguards, agents Alan Weiss (JEREMY PIVEN) and Cynthia Morales (ANNABELLA SCIORRA), scramble heroically to keep up with them, especially when Ben's cell phone is on the fritz, which is most of the time. This leaves the agents a great deal of time to indulge their constant bickering, a running exchange which began long ago in D.C. and shows no sign of letting up. It also presses them into close quarters for long hours, at night, in some of the most romantic settings in Europe, and ultimately gets them to think about the real underlying problem in their professional relationship: Weiss and Morales may be falling in love.

"My background is musical theater," says director Cadiff, whose stage credits include co-writing and directing Brownstone, winner of a Richard Rodgers Production Award. "Traditionally, there is a 'B' love story, like Will Parker and Ado Annie in Oklahoma, which adds its own unique rhythm and humor to the action, and that's what Weiss and Morales bring to Chasing Liberty. He's a very romantic but somewhat chauvinistic guy who's really ill at ease with women and says inappropriate things and she's a by-the-book Secret Service agent who's self-assured, opinionated and also very sexy."

As Jeremy Piven describes Agent Weiss, "He doesn't know how to relate to women so her treats her like one of the guys. It doesn't matter that this approach never works because it's the only one he has."

"Jeremy and I got along very well," says Annabella Sciorra, who keeps up the lively banter as agent Morales. "In fact, we developed a relationship similar to our characters. We enjoy each others' company and make each other laugh but we can also annoy each other in really specific ways, which is fine because that makes Andy laugh."

"For a film with this kind of comedy and pacing it's important to have a great ensemble cast where all the players keep up that same energy level," offers producer Broderick Johnson, another fan of the classic romantic comedy. "Having two stories running concurrently just adds to the creative mix and Andy never loses a beat."

On the Lam in Europe: A Kaleidoscope of Sets and Locations

From an English golf resort to a castle in Prague, from a Venetian fish market to a country road on the Austrian/German border, Chasing Liberty spans a total of 80 sets spread over five countries. Sets were predominately practical with locations both urban and rural in England, Italy and Czech Republic, with additional photography in Germany and the U.S.

In the original script, Anna's adventures take her to Vienna, not Prague, but while scouting locations the filmmakers discovered that Prague might be a better place to film for "settings that worked from both a visual and a production standpoint," according to Johnson. "Prague was ideal." Anna's adventure begins there, crosses into Venice by rail and ultimately to Berlin for the Love Parade, an actual annual event celebrated by huge crowds in the streets of downtown Berlin since 1989.

"A lot of movies about teenagers take place in high school or college settings but this picture really gets out in the world," says Kosove. "It's a story about a person who's not quite a teenager anymore, who's leaving those years behind and growing into adulthood, so the motif is well suited to the ever-changing landscape and new experiences that Anna encounters through various cities in Europe."

Cadiff took full advantage of the eclectic locales to help convey Anna's excitement and her growing confidence, as well as opportunities for humor, not to mention Ben's increasing uneasiness as his assignment seems to be whirling completely out of control. "Principal photography is the director's medium," notes Kosove. "You have to have faith in your director to let him shoot the movie the way he sees it, and we certainly did. He's done a spectacular job. It doesn't hurt that he's a very funny guy, one of the top sitcom directors in the world."

Prague's jeweled architecture escaped Europe's wars virtually unscathed. Baroque palaces, Gothic bridges and art nouveau statues still abound. Nestled in the Vltava River Valley, the capitol of the Czech Republic is known as the city of 100 spires. "One of the great things about it," remarks Oscar-winning production designer Martin Childs (Shakespeare in Love), "is that it offers an exceptionally photographic skyline with fabulous silhouettes and dramatic profiles, lots of towers and turrets. It's dazzling."

Though the city has become a hub for feature film production, few of the stories photographed there are actually set in Prague. Most often it doubles for other cities like Paris. Opting to present the city's architectural heritage for what it is, the Chasing Liberty filmmakers took full advantage of features such as its serpentine streets in which to shoot the high-speed chase where Anna and Ben first elude her security detail. The pair cross the 14th-century Charles Bridge, where the river offers a perfect reflection of a nearby illuminated castle on that particularly clear and beautiful night.

Perched atop Wenceslas Square, the neo-Renaissance National Museum features high vaulted, fresco-lavished ceilings, marble columns and floors, which the production used for a diplomatic banquet for the First Family and 200-plus extras decked out in evening gowns and tuxedos. As Cadiff explains, "We wanted the film to capture a sense of grandeur and elegance in showing places that the president and his family would likely spend their time, the settings in which Anna has grown up."

In contrast, Prague also offered abundant nightlife chic for settings that help illustrate Anna's metamorphosis, starting with her first night out on the town. The tone shifts, as outlined by director of photography Ashley Rowe, a BAFTA Award-winner for his cinematography on the British miniseries Friday on My Mind and most recently director of photography on the Touchstone comedy Calendar Girls. "We used an edgier style for the Prague night scenes, everything changes when Anna and her friend hit the street," he explains. "A steadicam follows them through the narrow, shadowy, mysterious alleyways. Shades are cooler and more extreme than in the earlier banquet scene - more greens and blues and a steelier look. The nightclub they go to looks almost like it's underwater. It has a shimmering green tone and we used hand-held moving cameras because it's a place where people are going to get jostled and knocked around."

Venice, while unquestionably beautiful and inspirational, proved a logistic challenge. Parfitt, who worked there previously on Wings of the Dove, knew what they would be facing but attests that, "it's manageable if you plan it right. The problem is, obviously, you're taking a production crew that relies heavily on transportation to a city without roads. We had to transfer all our camera equipment onto barges." With as many as 200 cast and crew working on any given day, organization was essential to move people and equipment on schedule. "Not only can't you drive a truck and park it," Rowe points out, "you can't just pull up a boat and leave it somewhere either because it blocks the canal. You have to know exactly what you'll need for a day's shoot, offload it quickly and release the barges."

Later, Rowe took full advantage of the canals to design his lighting scheme, an important element since most of the Venetian scenes were filmed at night. "There's water everywhere so I worked with rippling light," he reveals. "I had huge lighting units hidden behind buildings, pumping light into the water. Actually, it looks quite magical."

Filmmakers obtained hundreds of custom-designed trolleys and hired strong men to maneuver loads of equipment over canal bridges, which often have numerous steps.

On the plus side, there was no shortage of stunning settings from which to choose. The Grand Canal, the city's main thoroughfare, meanders its way through two and a half miles, offering the most magnificent views imaginable and a variety of architectural styles. The production also used the famed 16th-century Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal, as well as other scenic backgrounds including the Piazza San Marco, Academia Bridge, the Bridge of Sighs and the famous 14th-century Venice fish market as well as numerous picturesque squares, canals and cafés.

Ironically, there amidst some of the most admired and oft-photographed byways in the world, it was the film crew that drew the largest crowds as locals and tourists alike stopped and people of all ages leaned out from high-rise windows to observe the filming.

"It's all very romantic, this jaunt through Europe," observes Cadiff, "especially for a girl from a sheltered life who knows of these places only through books. Suddenly she's running around on the side streets of Old Town Prague, hiding from the police in Venice, jumping onto trains, getting lost and making her own way and meanwhile seeing some exquisitely beautiful places. It's a whole different environment than life at the White House."

"I'd never been to Prague or Venice, so I felt as if I was experiencing these things right along with Anna," Moore says candidly. "My reactions were completely genuine. Honestly, this was the best summer vacation I've ever had!"

The Berlin Love Parade

Of all Anna's adventures, nothing better exemplifies her newfound sense of freedom and self-expression than the Berlin Love Parade. Part street concert, part demonstration and all party, the Love Parade is a wild, festive, music-driven rave originated in 1989 by a popular DJ to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall and allow his listeners to express their support for tolerance and understanding between people and nations. An immediate success, it became a yearly event, drawing crowds worldwide and growing from an original 150 participants to a million and a half at last estimate. Imagine Mardi Gras, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Times Square on New Year's Eve and set it to a thumping techno beat. Add pink feather boas, bikini-clad girls on stilts, silver-painted guys in bustiers and saris, tattooed shaved heads, butterfly costumes and lots of fake fur and that's just a glimpse of the "anything goes" atmosphere the Love Parade inspires.

Reproducing the Love Parade was, as Kosove acknowledges, a major feat. "Martin Childs and Ashley Rowe did an extraordinary job. Then our second-unit provided terrific footage and aerials of the actual Parade," which, coincidentally, was taking place simultaneously in the German capitol while the production (for practical reasons) staged their own version in Prague's Letna Park.

"We built a stage, hired a lot of Czech extras in fantastic costumes from Rosie Hackett and brought in DJ Jeremy Healy to really get the crowd going," says Parfitt. Healy, one of the most sought-after DJs in the UK and known worldwide for his sell-out electronica/dance club music compilations, his high-energy arrangements for runway fashion shows and his flamboyant performances at top entertainment spots around the globe, added unquestionable legitimacy to the scene. "When you see it, it's hard to believe it's staged. It looks like documentary footage."

Quirky costumes made for a colorful bohemian display and a fun assignment for costume designer Rosie Hackett, whose work encompasses a range of productions from feature film to videos, romantic comedy to Shakespearean drama. Her first step was to raid her personal collection to come up with such unique treasures as outfits worn by Annie Lennox in music videos. Additionally, Hackett staffed a workshop with local artisans in Prague for a month to create a stunning array of costumes for the approximately 1,500 extras.

Czech art students built floats covered with balloons, streamers and rainbow flags. The production art department constructed facades for some of the structures to allow revelers to climb atop them and, as Childs puts it, "do irreverent things." Giant projection screens featured larger-than-life images of the dancers, as is done at the actual parade.

Even Jeremy Piven found himself momentarily caught up in the illusion. While enjoying some down time between his scenes he happened by a television, caught live CNN coverage of the Berlin Love Parade and thought he was viewing footage from the day's shoot. "I said, 'wait a minute, they're showing dailies on CNN?!,'" the actor recounts. "It was really disorienting for a few moments. Actually, now that I think of it, ours looked like more fun."

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the U.K.

Before any actor stepped foot on a Prague train or Venetian gondola, the production made camp in London and Essex, England, where production designer Martin Childs created amazingly realistic interiors and exteriors of the Fosters' residence, the White House.

"For security reasons it's very difficult to get access to the White House and you cannot even drive along Pennsylvania Avenue anymore," explains Parfitt, who previously collaborated with Childs on a number of productions including Shakespeare in Love. "So we were faced with either relying on CGI or trying to find another location, and going to the UK was the logical choice." It's not as much of a stretch as one might imagine. "The architectural origins of all those stately buildings in Washington, D.C. were the grand houses found in England and all its colonies. The White House was another example of that neoclassical style in vogue at the time." Indeed, the Executive Mansion, as it was originally called, was built in 1792 from an award-winning architectural plan by Irish-born architect James Hoban.

The Chasing Liberty locations team ultimately found a house in Essex, England, that bore a striking resemblance to the White House. "It's extraordinary," says Childs, "it's a two-thirds scale version if you shoot from specific angles," and if the shots are tight enough to exclude nearby cars or other structures that would reveal the building's actual size. Lighting aids the illusion, strategically placed on the property by DP Ashley Rowe.

Childs, renowned for his depth of research on assignments, studied not only the architecture and interior structure of the White House but also its décor through several presidential administrations. He built the Oval Office set to scale at renowned Pinewood Studios, after initially experimenting with a roomier construction designed to accommodate a camera crew. "The proportions just didn't work," he says of the enlargement. "You couldn't fit the picture frames in the proper places and it looked all wrong. So, for once, I built something the right size instead of improvising." The Foster White House furnishings include replicas of the real Oval Office's Remington bronze horses plus original landscape paintings commissioned by a local artist in the spirit of a John Ford Western as well as a formal portrait of President Foster.

Continuing in a theme of elegance blended with comfortable Americana, Childs designed the interior of Air Force One in natural warm tones and plush leather chairs. In contrast to the realistically scaled Oval Office set, the jet's interior, also constructed at Pinewood, was custom-made for camera and crew maneuvers, including a raised platform built alongside the aircraft's exterior, allowing for a camera to be dollied in through a window.

Various locations in the English countryside stand in for portions of the White House, including the Stoke Park Club, previously employed by Hollywood as the setting for the chess game between James Bond and Goldfinger, as well as scenes from Tomorrow Never Dies and Bridget Jones's Diary. Here, amidst 350 acres of lush greenery, a Rose Garden press conference takes place while inside, the club's hallways and staircases double for White House interiors - an effortless transformation considering that the estate's neoclassic mansion was constructed in 1790, two years before the White House. Another English mansion, the Codicote House, built in the 1780s, provided additional interiors for a dining room and Anna's spacious bedroom, which required the crew to remove an existing window and attach a large black tent (known as "the black hole") to the back of the house so that nighttime footage could be accomplished during daylight hours. The camera focuses on a teenager dancing alone in her room then slowly pulls back to take in the grandness of the space and, ultimately, reveal the White House.

"People looking at the footage actually asked how we got access to the White House, which was a great compliment," says Parfitt.

Childs' dedication to detail inadvertently caught him up in heightened D.C. security while traveling through the capitol en route to Hollywood with source material about the Oval Office, histories of First Families and White House floor plans. "I had a suitcase full of what must have looked like the best way to sneak into the Oval Office under cover of night but was in fact completely innocent research for a romantic comedy," he relates with typical good humor. Singled out for a thorough search, he watched while airport security passed his luggage through multiple x-rays, leafed through each book and then interrogated him. "I tried to explain everything in a sort of blustery, Hugh Grant fashion," Childs admits. "Just a whisker short of a strip search, I managed to convince them that I was all right."

Working in concert with Childs' designs, the visual effects team, led by Emmy-nominated Special Effects Supervisor Simon Frame helped sustain the White House illusion and a number of other images throughout Anna's European sojourn. As Kosove acknowledges, "Pictures like this appear to have no special effects because there are no fireballs or explosions onscreen, but it actually involves a fair amount of effects work from recreating the White House ambiance to presenting a bungee jump in a rocky canyon."

The opening image, in which Anna is introduced relaxing in her bedroom, is a perfect example. As Frame explains, "It's a pull-out shot of the room. Anna is inside and from the décor it's clearly a teenage girl's bedroom. As the camera moves further out to reveal more of the room we see it's a bit larger than average - in fact, it's huge. As the camera moves back from the window to reveal some of the building's outside columns we realize that it's likewise a huge building, and then when we ultimately pull out to frame the building finally identifies itself as the White House. We pan around to take in the whole structure and there's a fountain in the foreground, trees all around."

To complete the illusion, Frame downloaded the actual blueprint of the White House and built a digital replica. Additional textual reference provided by the art department, such as detail from the highly detailed area above the portico, enhanced his digital reproduction.

That shot is divided into three parts, as Simon elaborates: the live action of Moore, joined with the virtual White House already in Frame's computer and ultimately joined to a three-dimensional landscape pieced together from various tress and shrubs shot earlier. Turns out that the only tricky part of the composition is getting in and around the portion that actually exits - the window frame. As Frame concludes, "I can't cheat that. It's reality."