Filmin' It Old School, Part 2

Director of the El Mariachi trilogy, Robert Rodriguez often provides some of the best supplemental material on his DVDs. On Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he provides a “Ten Minute Cooking School” featurette that enlightens viewing on how to make the pork entrée Johnny Depp kills for in the flick. It’s high comedy. But he also shows how to make movies on a shoestring budget with the other segment, titled “Ten Minute Film School.” Big budgets for special effects? A thing of the past.

We hear ya, aR-Rod. We hear ya.

In the screenplay for Mafia: The Movie, the main advancement of plot occurred as the cast shrank, as citizens and mafia members alike were offed with each passing night or trial-by-day. Witty. Fast-paced dialogue could amend for no cash for day scenes, but at night, well, that’s when the action happens. So consider this your 2 Minute Film School on how to do special effects and little money and even less cinematic integrity. Two examples to follow.

The High-Flying Hangar: In the game of Mafia, there is a player who has the ability to save one and only one person during each night. In our circle, he/she was the ArchAngel; but this role is known to have other names. For the purposes of the script and our lack of wings, our ArchAngel was transformed into a different alias: a superhero. Don’t ask me why, but the superhero Hangarman, a cunning justice-defender with a penchant for thwarting evil doers and Mommie Dearest, was born.

However, for an ArchAngel to save someone in the game requires a whole scene of action in a movie, and so, we decidedly to play on one of my famous foibles for such a setting. The idea was simple; the Mafia decides to kill my character during the night. Their plan? Throw a Frisbee towards a lamppost, and watch as I Air Jordan my way to an untimely death. But Hangarman was to catch said Mafia in their plans, preventing the disc and myself from making an untimely date at 1 Lamppost Lane. Shooting the scene should have been easy. Frisbee comes from the left, I come from the right, and a Flying Hangar of Truth comes out of nowhere to knock the disc to the ground and give me time to realize how close I was to death.

What? That’s TOTALLY realistic. I hear Superman Returns is using a similar sequence.

One problem: you ever try and hit an airborne Frisbee with a flying hangar? Harder than it seems. In fact, it’s harder than hitting a baseball, kicking a field goal, and draining a half-court shot all at the same time. This is why hangars aren’t a part of Ultimate.

Considering we only needed a split-second shot of a spinning wire hangar knocking the plastic disc from the sky, we improvised. We hung the disc from a longer piece of clear scotch tape, made sure the one holding said apparatus was out of the shot, and then drilled it with our hangar. We had to use Scotch tape because there are no blue-screen backdrops in the high school parking lot. In post-production, this shot looked awesome. It should be an inspiration to all.

The 2-Part Dummyshot: Later on in the script, it calls for one of the final citizens – Joe Brescia (still being played by Fidel Blogstro), to be pushed out a second story window by the Mafia and fall to his death. Now, neither Joe nor Rob were up for “doing their own stunts,” so we improvised once again. Enter the stunt double.

The stunt double was no more than a Syracuse University sweatshirt and pair of jeans stuffed with many other sweatshirts and pairs of jeans. Our stunt dummy lacked a head, and we joked I’d add one later in editing (which I had no idea how to do, but it appeased the masses.) At this point in the shooting schedule, Stunt Dummy was prepping for his second death, having played the role of “James” as he got hit by a car. (The dummy and the car survived.)

Framing such a shot in a clever way can make up for some budgetary shortcomings (like our actor lacking a head.) The plan, once again, was simple. We’d shoot “Joe” standing at the end of a long 2nd-story hallway, have him turn around suddenly, and then BANG, cut to an outside shot of the dummy falling to his death.

I guess we should have actually attached the torso to the legs. The dummy split in two on the way down.

Darth Maul Style.