Mr Sleep here decided to share his on-set visit to the MIGHTY JOE YOUNG set. You see they are shooting some additional scenes now that the film got bumped from the summer schedule. This could be a good thing. I don't know, but anyway, here's Mr Sleep... (oh yeah, he also talks a bit about Armageddon and X-Men, but on the X-Men bit, I do know that Bryan Singer is looking at possibly shooting in Canada, and also upon meeting him some 3 times and a couple of phone calls, I do know that Bryan definately didn't strike me as being an idiot. Actually quite the reverse, he seemed to be quite sharp.)
Mr. Sleep here with details from my Mighty Joe Young visit. Not only did I get to see them film the additional scenes, but I came away with some other minor info regarding other big projects.
So anyway, I went to the Disney studios in the Aryan settlement known as Burbank, California. I shuffled my self to studio 3 where the Mighty Joe Young crew were set up. My visit got off on the wrong foot when I came upon the unsettling realization that THERE WAS NO CRAFT SERVICE TABLE LOCATED ANYWHERE ON THE PREMISES. Was it true what they say about Disney's cheapness?
Anyway, after I collected myself, I went to see the main set. It was an impressively built recreation of an outdoor Los Angeles sewer canal. It was done in what is commonly refered to as "forced perspective", meaning that it was built to look bigger than it really is. Tonight's scenes consisted of Mighty running down the canal fleeing persuing helicopters. Mr. Underwood explained that the copters would be added later via CGI. Now folks, I want to go on record as saying that there is a world of difference between watching a movie and watching a movie being made. You would think, like I did when I went to see them film, that filming a man in a gorilla suit running down a sewer passage would be easier than propositioning George Michael in a public bathroom. Well, chalk up another notch for youthful naivate. First off, I found out that the actor in the Mighty Joe costume had no way off seeing .
Isn't that something? All the great strides in technology that have been made in the past five years and they still couldn't devise a way to give the poor bastard some visual accuaty. Actually, Mr. Underwood said that they had some sort of tiny camera system installed in the suit, but the extreme heat of being in the gorilla suit always caused the lens to get fogged up. So, basically what you had was a man that couldn't see one inch ahead of him in an oppresively hot and heavy gorilla suit running and hoping he didn't collide with the walls. Not only that, but the actor would always get water on the camera lense with each take and as a result would render the take useless because a watery lense would cause the post production helicopter effects to distort.
After watching a guy running in a gorilla suit for an hour lost it's novelty, I decided to look around the rest of the Disney studio. In the next soundstage over there happened to be a closed set for Armegeddon. It looked liked Disney's concept of a closed set differed from mine because the doors were wide open. I peeked inside and what layed before me was a very impressive example of production design. It looked to be a cave of some sort, filled with some otherwordly looking rock formations. It also took up about 95 percent of the soundstage and this was a very big soundstage. Parked squarely in the middle of all this was a lunar rover space car thingy. It was just as awesome looking as the set was. I struck up a conversation with one of the securty guards and he told me some interesting details about the set.
First off, in order to get the whole thing to fit into the soundstage, they had to dig into the floor to make it about ten feet deeper. He then went on to say that this particular set was the inside of the asteroid that threatens the earth in the movie. Total cost of the set---2 million bones. He then pointed to the lunar vehicle and said that is was an actual functioning automobile.
He said that they used a Humvee transmission for it and that it hauls some major ass. Total cost---1 million. I'm going to proclaim right here and now that Armeggedon is going to be the killer meteorite flick. Sure, Deep Impact is going to have the more solid human drama angle, but quite truthfully, when it comes to dangerous meteorites, I just want to see alot of shit blow up. And nobody has done more with the "alot of shit blowing up" aesthetic than Armegeddon Uberproducer Jerry Bruckhiemer.
So, I went back to the Mighty Joe Young stage and easedropped on a conversation between Oliver Wood (the Director of Photography) and another crew member (I would say Associate Producer, but they never get invited to the set). Anyway, Mr. Wood said that he was offered the X-Men movie and that he passed because he thought that "the director was an idiot" (no lie). He didn't say Brain Singer's name, but since Singer is attached, that is who I assume he was talking about. He went on to say that they want to shoot the film in Australia for some reason. Mr. Wood told the guy he was talking to that they would be insane to film such an undertaking in a foriegn environment. I guess the producers are doing it for budgetary reasons. Oh, to be privy to the Hollywood grapevine!
So, that's my report. Sorry if it's a bit long. The scene itself was just of a running Gorilla, but it looked cool. Incidentally, I found out that the craft service area was inside of a truck that was parked nearby. My faith in Tinsletown was restored as I boosted handfuls of Red Vines and Reeces Peanut Butter cups.
