Episode Two wouldn’t have been possible without Jeri Kalvan offering her services to our production. This CHICK is no joke! She was Kirsten Dunst’s stunt double in the Spiderman movies! I mean that’s better than being Kirsten Dunst!

She was calm and supportive even as I fought moments of fear and uncertainty with the stunts. Below is a short interview I had with her and Josh Bradley our assistant stunt coordinator. Josh kindly demonstrated all the falls for me before I did them myself…it helped so much.

If you want to know more about Jeri and her husband Jack’s gym check out their site.

I’ve also included the only two takes we got of me falling into the dumpster. That’s all we shot before someone complained and we had to stop shooting.

We set up two ladders right next to the dumpster, just off screen, and created a scaffolding between them for me to stand on. Jeri and Josh set up a landing area with cardboard boxes and a pad on top of them right behind the dumpster. So what you see is a bit of an optical illusion. I don’t actually land in the dumpster, I did a suicide jump and landed behind the dumpster. If you don’t get it, you’ll see what I mean when you watch the uncut takes.

Enjoy!  And don’t forget, episode four premieres next Tuesday.

Episode Two was the most challenging episode to put together but also the most fun.

It all began after brainstorming with a writer friend of mine.  I came up with the idea of Fantastica killing herself like the Samurai do when they have been dishonored.  Stabbing herself didn’t seem very exciting visually, so I went with jumping to her death.  Yeah that would be exciting.  One problem…no money.

What I love about low budget filmmaking is it forces you to really get creative about how you’re going to accomplish things.

As I’m pondering how to pull off this fall I come across these photos and thought “Hey!  Maybe I can shoot a still sequence and put it together so it looks like she’s falling down the side of the building.”

BEFORE

So first, I had to figure out how I was going to get shots of Fantastica falling.  I hooked up with a friend of mine, Mark Paskell, who happens to be a magician.  He swore me to secrecy before sharing some magical secrets about how he could make me levitate as we shot the stills.  After talking it through we realized it wouldn’t work.  We’d loose the effect falling would have on my body and clothing.

Take 2.  He called some of his circus friends to see if we could find a trampoline to use.  No luck.

Take 3.  He called his friend Jeri Kalvan to see if she would let me do the fall in the back of her house where she had an all purpose gym she and her husband built.  Jeri is a kickass stunt woman.  More on her in part two of behind the scenes.

Jeri’s gym offered me two choices for my fall; a thirteen foot ledge or a five foot ledge.  Immediately I lean towards thirteen feet.  That isn’t much of a drop.  I can do that no problem.  Well let me tell you I never even got to the thirteen foot ledge.  When I stood on the five foot ledge I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to jump from that!  There’s something about falling and the psyche that don’t mesh well.

Now let me preface this with I’ve never done a stunt fall in my life.  Jeri quickly realized she couldn’t let me just show up and launch myself from her ledge.  I’d probably end up seriously injuring myself.  She had me come in the day before we shot and trained me for a couple of hours.  We also choreographed how my body would fall through the air so we could capture the different positions during the photo shoot.

AFTER (WE FLIPPED THE IMAGE)

Without Jeri I couldn’t have done it.  I was scared to death the entire time.  She gave me a sense of safety but still I had to psyche myself up before every fall.  I literally kept thinking… “This is it I’m going to die.”  Then I’d shake it off…and leap.  The next day I felt like I’d been in a really bad car crash.  My body ached all over.

I wanted to show you some footage of the photo shoot but due to a technical snafu it pains me to say I lost all the video footage.

Instead, I’ve put together some of the original still sequences from the shoot so you can have a better idea of what we did.  I took these photos, created a mask of Fantastica’s body for each still frame and then picked various building shots Sandra (the D.P.) and I shot to place behind Fantastica.  Once I finalized the sequence Justin Herrmann, our amazing visual effects wizard, stepped in and polished it all, making everything match and adding the feel of motion to the sequence.

What I learnt from doing this fall sequence is anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

The original plan was to steal our Episode One rooftop location from the building where our loft was located.  It was gorgeous…the Los Angeles downtown skyline as a backdrop, wide open space for Fantastica to perform  a dramatic run and leap to her death.

Unfortunately after about an hour on the roof, security came three deep, and kicked us off.

Our shoot schedule was tight (isn’t it always?) and losing the roof meant a pickup shoot was going to have to happen down the road.  For future reference, rooftops aren’t easy to come by with no money, too many legal issues.  Note to self:  Do not write roofs into low budget scripts.

So three months later we’re on our new roof location thanks to my friend Mikki Willis and Elevate Films.  We had permission, all was good.  And then a helicopter showed up connected to another film production.  Obviously they had more money than us.  They  hovered right over our shoot for an hour.  We had to keep shooting  to maintain our schedule but our sound was ruined.  We did ADR for my line “That’s how I caught my boyfriend with some second rate superhero”.

The Jump

We laid down green screen below the elevated area Fantastica stood on for the POV shots.  My stand-in, Shyla, held my shoes against the ledge for the shot.  There was no room for me to fit in there.

Jeri Kalvan was our stunt coordinator and Josh Bradley was the assistant stunt coordinator.  More on them when I talk about Episode Two.

We collected a bunch of used boxes from LAReuseIt, a great Yahoo group where you recycle unwanted items instead of throwing them away.  Jeri and Josh set them up as the base of my landing pad for the jump.  Then they placed a crash pad on top of those.  They spotted me on both sides.  It was fun to experience what it’s like to do my own stunts but it sure wasn’t easy.

Check it all out in the Episode One behind the scenes video, and remember Episode Two of CHICK drops tomorrow.