Go Behind The Scenes Of That Spectacular Single-Shot Sequence In ‘The Final Girls’
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Around the time thatThe Final Girlshit limited theaters and VOD, we showed offsome pages from the production diarythat helped directorTodd Strauss-Schulsonplan his stunning, meta horror comedy. And now that the film ishitting Blu-ray and DVD today, we have another cool behind the scenes feature to show you.
InThe Final Girls, there’s a key sequence that was pulled off in a single impressive shot. (If you’ve seen it, it’s the part when the camp counselors and kids trapped inCamp Bloodbathtry to trap the killer.) I was sure that visual effects were used to combine several different shots into one, but now we can show you on-set footage ofThe Final Girlssingle shot being completed by a programmed camera rig that made it possible. And if you haven’t seen the movie, don’t worry, because we have the finished clip from the movie too. Watch!
First, here’s the finished shot fromThe Final Girls:
And now here’s the camera rig in action, shooting in one continuous take:
For those curious, Strauss-Schulson tells us that camera is the Genuflex MK III by General Lift, “a programmable motion control camera that can track 7 feet per second and swing, pan, tilt, and roll 360 degrees, all while automatically focusing a camera.” And as you can see in the video, “it can also produce multiple takes with inhuman precision, repeating the exact same motions over and over within fractions of a millimeter, like a robot in a car factory that can hold a camera.” He also explains:
It’s never really been used before in a movie like this– to find a visual way to create a mindstate. This particular sequence is a panic attack, and I wanted to find a visual way to create that swirling out of control vortex of panic you feel during an anxiety attack.
This sequence was shot in a single day, and they ran through it about 12 times. But before it went in front of cameras, they did previsualization in order to show how complex the sequence was going to be in order to effectively pull them off on set. And you can check out the previz sequence right here:
The Final Girlsisout on Blu-ray and DVD today, chock full of plenty of behind-the-scenes extras, deleted and extended scenes, and commentary from the director along with cast membersTaissa Farmiga, Thomas Middleditch, Angela Trimbur, production designerKatie Byronand director of photographyElie Smolkin. It’s worth picking up immediately.
