The Woodstock Festival was held in New York State. Ang Lee’s plan was to shoot the film somewhere on the east coast. The original idea was to shoot in Massachusetts or State of Connecticut--CT because it’s not just geography. The environment is more similar to Sullivan County, where Woodstock is hosted, and the local government has a tax reduction policy for film website crews. When the crew was preparing to select the scene here, news came from New York State about tax reduction and exemption for the crew, so the crew returned to New York State and shot the film in a small place called New Lebanon
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Filming started at the end of August 2008. In order to film the big scene of the music festival, Ang Lee recruited thousands of extras from New Lebanon. They danced in underwear, rolled in the mud and even took drugs, trying to restore the grand gathering of hippies
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