Alleys and Mansions

Filming in public is always an experience. Especially, when you are wearing stuffing to appear fat. We had permission from my Dad's building manager to film in the alley around his building, but any pedestrian passing by would still enjoy the view of a misshapen man with a big hat and his blanket wearing friend.

There were five of us working on this day's scenes and I believe that each person had a turn operating the camera, for better or for worse. The alley scene involved a lot of traveling shots. Not having a Steady Cam made this difficult so, as always when there is no budget, we got creative with how we filmed. Instead of one long take down one alley and around the corner to the next alley, we split the movement into several takes and interspersed shots of Nunzies in pursuit.

At one point, Slim's large pants came unpinned (I had to pin them to fit around my waist), and it took the help of two friends to readjust Slim's pants and Slim's fat. At one point during the struggle with the fat, I yelled out "I can't get it up!" and then realized what I had said.

By the end of filming in the alley, a group of shady women came outside their place of employment to smoke. One of them said "I don't want that camera on me" and I could confidently say "don't worry, it won't be" (gag).

After the alley filming was done, we traveled to my house to film some "mansion" interiors. My house is not large, but once again strategy and creativity make miracles happen. In order to make it appear like more than two stories, we simply filmed characters walking up the same set of stairs several times to look like multiple floors. We placed the camera in the farthest corner of the living room and arranged the furniture to make it appear as a large bedroom.

By coincidence, my parents were planning on replacing the carpets, which of course included ripping up the old ones. As a bunch of high schoolers, we could not pass up this opportunity. We incorporated ripping up the rug in the scene. Unfortunately, we became a little overenthusiastic in our rug ripping and we ending up knocking over an end table and a lamp. Luckily, nothing was broken, but it was a funny moment looking back.