I just came back from standing around the perimeter of a movie set for about two hours. I’m super tired and my legs are kinda sore. Next year’s summer blockbuster Godzilla has been filming just blocks away from my home for the last three evenings.
On this particular evening I decided to watch the filming. After I got there, I saw them film a group of soldiers run up a street. The whole take lasted about ten seconds or so but they did it over and over again. The time in between takes was several minutes long, so it was a lot of waiting just to see a tiny bit of running. Once that was done, they repositioned some lights and the camera. They again had some soldiers run up the street but this time not as far. Once again they did this over and over again, with lots of waiting in between takes.
Once that shot was done, they move the set around again and I waited some more. Once they were ready again, they filmed the soldiers running in from all different directions where they gathered in one spot. It appeared that some of them were looking at something on the ground, as they took a knee. From my perspective, they were filming things backwards as chronologically, they’d probably run in to re-group, stop to take orders, and then head up the street.
I was told this was second unit footage which means there’s a good chance everything I waited for two hours to see will probably get cut. I’ll be lucky to even see this stuff on the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray. In any case, two hours of watching was enough for me, so I went home. I’m really looking forward to seeing my neighbourhood in the movie next summer!