See glimpses of the NoDa Charlotte home — and local art — in the Please Don’t Destroy movie

Someone knocked on the door of Zack Albert and Becca Bellamy’s NoDa Charlotte house a few years ago and asked an entirely unprompted and unexpected question: Would they ever consider allowing commercials or movies to be filmed in their home?

“I didn’t even know this was a thing,” Becca told CharlotteFive recently. “I never gave it any thought.”

It’s a thing that has a whole industry around it. There are location scouts who scour neighborhoods in Charlotte and other cities across the country for places that might have the good bones of a backdrop for video and still images. Once the initial scout snaps some photos of a potential home, it’s entered into some kind of database — as best as Becca and Zack can tell — that location scouts for movies all over the country can access.

Please Don’t Destroy: ‘The Boys’ House’

And that’s how Becca and Zack’s home ended up being the set for what was called “The Boys’ House” in “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain”.

They didn’t lobby to have their house included or try to impress anyone. They simply were selected out of a pages-long list of potential sites in the Charlotte area and three young men in their 20s moved in for a couple of weeks in the summer of 2022. (Well, sort of. At least the movie operations around making it look like three young men in their 20s lived there moved in for two weeks.)

“We didn’t realize that we won the lottery, basically — without even knowing we were playing,” Becca said.

Becca and Zack, who are friends I’ve known for several years, are two of the coolest and hippest people I know. (Do hip people say “hippest”? Probably not. I am the opposite of Becca and Zack.) They have style without even trying, as if it’s an effortless part of their souls — and their home reflects that. It’s open and airy, with quirky knick-knacks (Zack is a journalist who collects vintage typewriters) and gorgeous details and art pieces (Becca is an accomplished artist who once painted a treasured depiction of my late schnoodle, Maverick, for me).

Every year, the two collaborate to send hundreds of handmade holiday cards that include original art from Becca and are personally addressed on one of Zack’s typewriters.

It’s no wonder their home was selected to be in a movie.

So, what’s it like when someone wins the lottery? Here are 10 things to know about what it’s like to have your home selected to be the set of a Hollywood movie.

1. There is a bit of disruption to the neighborhood when filming is involved.

That original person who knocked on their NoDa home several years ago was scouting for a Food Lion commercial. Becca and Zack didn’t get it.

When the house two doors down was selected instead, they saw how their entire street was blocked off for a whole day to allow for filming.

“And I was like, ‘Oh, thank God, we didn’t get that. I can’t imagine. That looks crazy,’” Becca said. “I don’t care about our house, but I just didn’t want to be an imposition to the neighbors. That was my biggest concern — is being an imposition to the neighbors.”

A few years later, they got a call from someone saying they were scouting for a movie. Even though they didn’t know what the movie was about, knowing it was backed by a big studio made a difference. The tradeoff for the neighborhood disruption seemed like it might be worth it.

“That’s sort of a different ballgame,” Becca said.

And when filming took place in July 2022, they saw just how different it was. Their street was blocked off again, and moving trucks lined every inch of the curbs. The parking lots of nearby Highland Mill Montessori and the Apostolic Church on E. 36th Street were commandeered, and shuttle vans ran crew back and forth from both to the cordoned-off street throughout the day.

“It started before we even got to the neighborhood — you saw signs everywhere directing people,” Becca said. “It was just crazy.”

Added Zack: “They were really good at explaining everything to us in terms of ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’ But at the same time, it still was overwhelming to see it at this scale, in real life, in person. And I think that’s what blew us away.”

2. The crew works with the neighbors to try to make it a good experience.

Despite the mass of people who invaded the street for filming, everyone went out of their way to accommodate neighbors, according to Zack and Becca.

Zack and Becca talked to neighbors with houses directly next to theirs to give them a warning about what was coming.

“Most of the neighbors were just so excited about the whole thing,” Becca said.

Several got compensation for renting out their driveways or yards to be used as staging areas for equipment. And most people the couple talked with afterward gushed about how respectful everyone on the crew was.

“They went above and beyond to make this an easy experience for everybody,” Becca said. “Thank goodness. They really try very hard to make it as good of an experience as they can.”

3. There isn’t a whole lot you can do to make your house right for a movie — sometimes it’s just the right match.

In the end, the biggest draw for scouts to Zack and Becca’s house was something they had no control over: their millhouse bungalow surrounded by trees just happened to be what they were looking for.

“Our place needed to look like it could be set in the mountains,” Becca said. “It had to look kind of like a bungalow. They had a certain aesthetic they were looking for.

“The rustic nature of our house appealed. And the fact that they could shoot it from an angle and there’s trees around it.”

And the fact that their house had tons of unique details — stained-glass windows in the front door, clean lines and unique art pieces throughout — wasn’t even a huge factor (though a version of one of Zack and Becca’s art pieces did make its way into the movie).

Directors liked that the house not only had three bedrooms for each of the three Please Don’t Destroy characters, but also an open layout through the kitchen and living room.

“So it gives you a lot more ability to shoot in different directions,” Becca said.

Even so, it took three separate visits by a growing contingent of scouts and art directors and people associated with the movie before the final decision was made. Each time they came, they took photographs of nooks and crannies, and examined electrical panels to see if the home could handle the powerful equipment needed for the filming.

4. You won’t necessarily be the first to know details about the movie.

Their film contacts “were a little bit sparing with details,” Zack said.

“All we knew is it was going to be a vehicle for the Saturday Night Live group, Please Don’t Destroy, and that it was going to be a treasure-hunt type of theme — and hilarity ensues,” he continued. “And that was about all they’d tell us.”

They didn’t even get to see an advanced copy of the movie before it was released Friday.

5. There’s a contract and yes, payment for use of your home.

Becca started researching on the internet what terms of contracts with movie companies might look like for the use of their home. Film reps first told them they’d need the house for just a couple days, and it quickly ballooned to a couple weeks.

Only two very long days of that was for actual filming, though. The rest was needed for set-up and teardown of the equipment and set.

They negotiated a price that seemed fair. And while they didn’t want to disclose how much they received, they said it might not be as much as you’d think. Someone Becca talked to said they were once offered $20,000 for use of their home in a movie.

“We did not get $20,000,” Becca said.

They did get a sum that could be used to rent another place, but they opted to stay with Becca’s parents in Elkin, about 75 miles north of Charlotte.

6. You don’t have to pack up your home yourself (even though Zack and Becca did) but it does need to be cleared of any personal belongings.

You’re not technically moving, but you’re essentially doing the work of moving — removing all your furniture and treasured belongings. The film crew packs up and stores everything, taking meticulous photos so it can all be replaced as it was found.

But Becca and Zack still packed away a good deal of their own items because they were worried about some of their most fragile and meaningful pieces — including those vintage typewriters that Zack collects.

“We packed a lot of stuff that we were just afraid of getting messed up,” Becca said.

7. If you have something great in your house, it probably won’t be in the movie — but a version of it might.

If you pay close attention during the early frames of “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” you’ll see a unique piece of art in the kitchen behind Martin Herlihy’s character: A colorful wall of stickers affixed to panels.

There’s something just like that in the exact same place in Zack and Becca’s house, and the movie art directors loved it when they did early walk-throughs of the home. But it was also too personal — many of the stickers reference Charlotte and North Carolina attractions and businesses.

So the movie has their own version of the same artwork, with much more generic stickers.

It’s still colorful and still looks like something hip kids might have in their home — but if you zoom in you’ll see that the stickers could be from Anywhere, U.S.A.

“I was kind of surprised it was that closely replicated,” Zack said.

8. The level of detail on the set is extraordinary.

Zack and Becca visited the set for a day during filming to see what the transformation was like, and were astounded.

Dirty dishes sat in the kitchen sink. A spatula and discarded pasta was scattered next to the stovetop. The refrigerator — an older model moved in to replace their stainless steel one — was filled with cans of beer and pizza. An old Christmas card was tacked to the wall.

In short, it looked like a bunch of young, college-aged kids lived there.

“It’s almost like we could see what kind of vision that they wanted to achieve with converting this place over, and boy, they nailed it,” Zack said. “The lengths they went to was something else.”

9. Your neighbors might actually see more of the filming than you do.

While Zack and Becca were up in Elkin, Nick Tosco went on living in the house next door. It was a bit of an inconvenience to have to ask for the film crew to give clearance to walk down to his home — especially when he was juggling life with three young kids — but it was also fascinating to see how the industry worked.

“When I would get home from work, we would walk out and just watch them filming,” Tosco said. “Most of the time they were filming on the inside of the house, so there wasn’t any filming happening on the outside. But we did get to see the clip (at the beginning) where they jumped into the Subaru (on the street). We did get to see that being filmed in real time, which is cool.”

Otherwise, Tosco’s kids spent plenty of time playing around the enormous lighting truck parked next to their porch. He got to meet Please Don’t Destroy’s John Higgins and snapped a selfie with him.

“He was like, ‘Man, everybody in this neighborhood is so cool. They’re so easy-going and supportive of a movie takeover. We know this is a major inconvenience for you all, but everybody’s been so nice and we really love Charlotte,’” Tosco said.

One thing was most surprising to Tosco after watching the filming: Everything was constantly changing.

“It was always like, ’We’re going to do this! No, no, never mind, we’re not going to do that! And we’re going to …’” he said. “I had always thought that with movies, it was like, ‘OK, we’re going to be here for this amount of time, we’re going to film this way, we’re going to do this.’ But there were a lot more audibles being called. There’s just a lot of fluctuation and fluidity with the filmmaking process.”

10. They’re ready to do it again.

Once all their belongings were moved back, Becca said it still took a little bit before their house felt like their home again.

But she’s willing to do it all again.

“It was a really fun experience,” she said. “ And I cannot say enough good things about the people that work there. They work really hard, and they just really made it fun.”

Added Zack: “Once everything was done, and everything was put back like it was, I think we finally told them, ‘OK, if there’s a Volume 2 or a sequel, let us know.’ We’d be up for that.”