Raising the Barr

Gosh, I let it die here again. As is often the case when that happens, it's not because nothing was happening, it's because nothing EXCITING was happening. I've got a rough cut in place for that new trailer I mentioned previously. And that's all I'll say about that for now. Much of my time for the past few weeks has been spent working on a VFX shot list for Fred, to aid in his search for a studio to help us out with this beast. There's a reason I haven't posted any progress reports on THAT.

This is not exciting for anybody but boring people. You're welcome, Ben Stein.

With principal photography done, there's not a lot of excitement left to cover. It's going to be largely administrative stuff straight through to the end. But we do have a few odd pieces of filming still remaining, certain minor characters as yet uncaptured. Saturday we rolled... digital once again to cross one more piece off the list.

Scurvy. Check.

As we all know, when Dorothy arrives in Oz she's greeted by the Good Witch of the North as well as three Munchkins. While we filmed the Witch herself two years ago (and Dorothy two years before that, Jesus...), the Munchkins have been conspicuously absent. Until now, that is.

We returned to the storage unit green screen with our old friend Wesley Edge, as his Munchkin mayor Boq is the head of the welcome committee, apparently. Flanking him was... one guy, actually. Richard Barr, a jovial fellow and filmmaker in his own right.

I suppose jovial is a relative term.

In the book, Denslow drew two of the Munchkins looking almost identical. This made me think it would be fun if we had a set of twins in the greeting party, though no mention of this is made in the book. Or the script. It's not a point that's ever addressed, it's just another strange detail in an already bizarre scene.

We filmed the twins the traditional Hayley Mills way; Richard in one outfit, film, lock camera, change outfits, reposition, film. This took us a little longer than it would have to just go with two separate actors, but I think it was worth it. Richard gave two fun, very distinct performances, and I wonder if some viewers might not even notice the gag.

They might just gag, even.

I think we've officially done everything you CAN do in movie, now? We've filmed with men, women, children, babies, animals, puppets, prosthetic make-up, on sets, locations, and green screen... Now we've done splitscreen twins... What are we missing? This could be our only chance to ever make a movie, we want to make sure we nab the whole set.

Once we finished the welcome committee, we sent the Richards on his merry way, and Wesley hung around to film one more minor scene Boq has with Dorothy. With that done, he's now officially wrapped. The exciting thing about what we captured Saturday was that they were the last pieces we truly NEED. The other remaining minor characters are fun and exciting and add a certain amount of texture, but they're not crucial to the plot. We have actors cast, and we fully intend to film them, we just need to sort out costumes and a few other details.

More on that as it develops.