Stuff On Top

June 12, 2002 - 10:30 p.m. 
 

   hi there. the last couple of days have sure been gorgeous here.
i really should be maximizing the beauty of them.  instead i seem to have just woken up from the two hour nap i took this evening.
  ok, last night i was down at the shore, sitting on a park bench, watching the sunset, and i had to walk through the glorious evening to get there, so that is something, isn't it.  wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if it was 28 and sunny all summer long?  well, i'd probably get tired of it actually, but every saturday/sunday for the entire summer wouldn't be all that bad.
   ahhh to dream. if it was like that thought his wouldn't be vancouver and it would likely be drought conditions for the rest of the valley.

   so since saturday they have been shooting a movie around work.  i wasn't there on saturday or sunday, of course but on monday i was there while they were shooting as well as today (yesterday they were farther up the street or something).  the movie that they are shooting is Cody Banks. 
   This is a movie starring Frankie Muniz and Angie Harmon.  Frankie, is of course, Malcom of Malcom in the Middle and Angie is of course, Abbie from Law and Order.  The movie is one where Frankie plays a secret super agent, or some such as a teenager.    The scene that they have been shooting is one where a blue volvo is a run away down a long hill with a baby alone in the car.  Agent Cody chases the card down the hill on his super secret skateboard, tries to stop the car by holding it back and then finally jumps on board and climbs through the sun roof to pull the e-brake just before it hits the train.
   I have been doing my damndest not to be a gawker and watch all day, mostly because i, you know, have work to do. but the hard part is that the part they have been shooting on (at least monday and wednesday, tuesday they were up the hill somewhere) has been taking place outside of the windows of our area.  
   i guess i knew a lot about shooting already, from whatever source i have known but, if you watch 10 minutes out of every 2 hours you have a great idea of what part of the movie they are doing. take after take...month long set ups, and etc.  not to mention being out of order.
  monday, during the morning, they shot the part where the mother gets her baby out of the stopped car.  i thought, maybe i had seen muniz, from the chest down, in a shot skating away from the throng.  it was pretty cool. there were about 30 extras that would throng to the car as they yelled action and then you'd watch them all walk back to the same place again. over and over again. it took a pretty good eye to tell the difference between the people hurrying through the set, after they were done the shot, going on with their day, and the normal people, extras.
   it was interesting and i had no real interest in seeing a star.  or at least this is what i thought, until 4 o'clock in the afternoon.  now they are setting up for a different shot. this one has muniz lying on top of the volvo, reaching in to pull the e-brake.  they were just setting up for the shot and i was watching it for a moment or two when i spotted the real frankie.  he was just sort of wandering around waiting for the shot.  sometimes managing to dodge out of the way long enough for me to confuse him and his stand in. of course, his stand in, was a 15 year old girl but we won't mention that to anyone.
   i would have gone home at this point, but then frankie starts skateboarding up and down the hill, doing tricks, being trained by their skate boarding expert. so i stayed late, almost an hour, watching this, and the shot and everything.  ok, i admit it, i was bit by the star watching bug.  and the movie making bug.  it doesn't hurt that malcom in the middle is one of my favourite shows.

   fast forward to today. today they were doing some really cool shots.  basically they only had two shots that took about 5 hours to finish.  the first was the volvo moving down the hill with no driver (fake baby at the wheel) backwards.  in front of it, or rather in front of the back, as it moves down the hill is our hero, on his skateboard, trying to push it to a stop, skateboard braking, smoking and a sparking as it goes.
   the first time i watched this happen, i was like, 'has to be a stunt double, he's just hanging off the trunk of this car'  and then it finishes and he takes his helmet off.  it was frankie.  so cool.  of course he was wearing this backpack that was tied right into the car trunk but it was so cool.  they did a dozen or so takes of this, each time, adding another factor.  at one point, they added about 6 cars squealing, spinning and almost hitting the volvo as it went through an intersection.  very cool.  i got an mpg of this action, although you can't make out muniz very well, but it is very cool. 
   the coolest thing though, was as they would turn around at the bottom of the hill and drive back up backwards.  backwards because they would pop the trunk and a little guy in a helmet would pop his head up and drive by remote control, as he was on his way down.
   the next shot was the car going down backwards, and had him climbing onto the trunk and leaping up onto the moving car jumping for the sunroof.

  ok. i might have been a little bit starstruck.
maybe. 

they're done shooting now though.