Stunts, Monsters, and Deleted Scenes

As I have said before, life would have been so much easier if I had taken an extra year to really get the script right before beginning filming. Instead, I spent a lot of time filming scenes that, after carefully examining them in context of the entire film, were unnecessary. The third date of filming had several scenes like this.

About five of us gathered at my friend Mike's house to use his woods. My friend Angel is very athletic and was quite a good gymnast. We had a scene of her as a flipping Nunzie--a black blur that was ninja like. She had to do the stunt several times before we got the shot I had wanted.

Already built in Mike's backyard was a tree fort. We filmed a scene of Slim laying siege to the Nunzie in the tree fort. The thing was already falling apart, and so we had to strategically place pieces of wood so that the fort looked more intact than it actually was.

We also filmed my dog, Terry, as a vicious monster when Slim and Tubba are pursued by "roving gangs of wild poodles". Terry seemed to dislike everyone, so it was not difficult to film closeups of him growling and barking whenever Mike would approach him.

Only two of the sequences filmed this day made it to the final cut. One was Slim finding a secret note inside a tent. The other sequence involved Slim and Tubba traveling through a rainforest. For the rainforest sequence, it was only Mike and I that were left. So one of us would set up the camera, press record, and we would both find our marks to perform the scene. Although this method saves other people from having to be present, it also requires more time, because we would stop and review what we had captured between takes. I would say about 1/4 of the final film was captured using this two person method. The next date of filming (which I will talk about next time), involved more than just two people.