I was wondering about young actors playing roles in horror movies. Do they allow the kids to see the movie when filming is complete? If I were, say, Linda Blair in Exorcist, I would be a little leery about seeing a horror movie, complete with scary scenes, at the tender age of 14 (I think that is how old she was when she played the possessed Regan).
The same goes for movies with explicit sex scenes. I can’t think of any examples right now. But I wonder if they refuse child actors the chance to see themselves on screen, given the objectionable content of the movie. If you’re 8 or 9 and play the son or daughter of a woman who is a prostitute, for example, how do you show that movie? If that happened to me, I’d want to see myself up on the big screen, and I’d want to see the WHOLE DAMN MOVIE.
The kids don’t see the scenes they’re not in while filming, and when they are in a scene, it can be shot without the sex/monster and have that edited in later. The director can say, “Act like you’re very scared” when the kid only sees an empty set. Also, since a lot of “scares” are really just startling moments, the kid isn’t bothered because he knows that the monster will jump out at him at a particular point.
After the film, it’s up to the kid’s parents to decide whether he or she can see the finished product.
Some of them get to see it, some don’t. Danny Lloyd who played six year old Danny in The Shining not only didn’t get to see the movie right away, he didn’t even know he was acting in a horror movie at all. He was just told it was some type of drama about a family staying in a hotel. He didn’t see the full movie until he was 16.
Linda Blair wasn’t really possessed by demons. She was on a movie set on a stage, with the director, camera operators, stage hands and various hangers on all around her, probably along with some guy standing just off camera holding a big button connected to a noisy motor that vibrated the bed.
Seeing the completed movie wouldn’t have given her amnesia.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley weren’t really in a giant pipe looking for Lord Voldemort. They were on a movie set, with a director, a bunch of cameras, a bunch of lights and a green screen. The cartoon snake probably hissed, “They call me . . . Tim.”
Besides which, they weren’t really Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. And they were getting rich.
Thanks, but I’m mostly talking about jump out scares and blood and gore scenes and sex scenes and the like. So this is more attuned I guess to younger kids under 10, maybe, who might be frightened/confused by what they’re seeing. I agree that older kids will understand what’s going on. Could Children of the Corn apply to this? That’s a horror movie with children in it.
I don’t know that much about making movies except for the fact that one of my childhood friends is one of the main special effects brains behind everything from Jurassic Park to Avatar and dozens of others. The main thing that I learned from him is that movie-making is almost always completely non-linear and the special effects are added in later. That has always been true to some degree but it is especially true today. If you look at the true original footage of a big blockbuster being made, you only see actors working on scenes out of context with few or none of the eventual background effects. That is especially true in movies that depend heavily on CGI. Actors often work in a green-screen studio with no more context than your average local weather news station. Only the writers and director know what the movie will look like when it is produced in final form.
It is common for actors no matter what their age to be completely surprised by the finished product. Even some adult actors were led to believe that they were working on a completely different movie than they really were. They fell for it because there is no way to tell based on the way the whole production process works.
Child actors may or may not know or appreciate what they are working on at the time. That is between them and their parents but, even if they get to see the final product, really young actors may not be mature enough to make the connection between the production process and the final product.
I’ve been on sets, (not horror movie ones) and what you see on the screen has nothing to do with what is seen on the set. Even if the horrible stuff is not added in by CGI later, the blood comes from an appliance and the supposedly dead actor obviously is up and chatting and getting ready for take two. And there has probably been some practice rehearsals without even the lines said.
For example, a scene I saw shot was supposed to take place on train tracks far out in the woods. It was actually short on train tracks located between two rows of houses. Good cameramen can do wonders.
Carrie Henn, the little girl who played Newt in James Cameron’s ***Aliens ***was once asked about this, about how scary it was to shoot the picture. She said it wasn’t the least bit scary at all. In between takes the guys who played the creatures would have the headpieces off and would run around and play games with her. Then they’d setup for a take, it would last a few seconds, and that was that.
The film only became so scary by way of its fast and intense editing. In fact, in the scene where Newt slips out of Ripley’s grip and slides down the air vent, because it was essentially a giant, two-story high sliding board she had so much fun going down it she starting to deliberately mess up takes just so she could keep doing it*!*
I think she was actually allowed to see the final film soon after it was released. She went with her mom, and she was so terrified by the results she could barely keep her eyes open*!* But she still didn’t describe watching it as traumatic or anything (although she did quit acting after that one role*!!*)
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding how movies are made. You think it’s like a stage play, but with cameras, right? Everyone is acting everything out non-stop?
That’s not how it works. How it works is more like this:
Shot 723: Adult is cut in half. Director says “OK, slap some green paint on his arm. Now, yell for the camera real good and hold your arm.” 40 takes later, they’re happy.
Shot 725: A day later, when you’re shooting all the kid scenes, the director says “OK, you just saw something really gross. Yeah, like your parents are kissing.” 20 takes later, they get a good facial expression.
Shot 724: Two guys in an FX studio, three months later, mix up some red glycerin. They green-screen out the arm and cut in the blood from the severed arm.
Six months later, the editing guy finishes putting all this together. Only at that point is it anything but tedious and boring.
Here’s another good example: did you ever notice how a lot of conversations in movies are shot over the shoulder of one actor so that you only see a little bit of their head? Then the camera moves to the shoulder of the other actor the same way? Those actors aren’t even in the same room! They’re not being shot on the same day. Maybe not even in the same state. They just find a stand-in who has the right head shape and hair style/color and shoot over their shoulder. Bonus: you put the dialogue on cue cards beside the camera so that the actor can appear to be looking at the other actor while reading lines they didn’t have to memorize.
Trust me, watching a movie being made is about as scary and exciting as watching Stephen King write a novel.
IIRC, Linda Blair had her back severely hurt due to the props on set flinging her around.
I’ve wondered about when the child is hurt as part of the plot. I bet they had to do some quick and imaginative editing in Bastard out of Carolina, for instance.
Even adults may have issues. I saw a documentary on Jodie Foster and she said she remembers the director yelling, “Action,” then nothing until he yelled “Cut” during the pinball machine rape scene in The Accused. She said she had to go around during lunch and comfort the male actors who played her rapists, they were so traumatized.
I’ve always wondered how kids act affectionate towards their on screen parents.
Heck, I was never too thrilled about my real parents hugging and kissing on me. If a stranger tried to pull that shit on me, with a full production crew with their cameras pointed at me, I’d be crawling out of my skin.
Read an interesting account of (at the time) child actress Natalie Portman’s acting in Leon - The Professional. This is a movie that contains extreme violence and a relationship between a 12 year old girl and an adult hitman that is in-universe sexually … unsettling (she propositions him; he turns her down. He clearly loves her, but not in that way).
Her parents were, apparently, reluctant to allow her to do it but she was all for it - apparently, what they had the most concern about was that her character was depicted as smoking cigarettes!
Well, I understand how movies are made. I’m talking about how kids deal with the finished product. Of course it’s not scary being behind the scenes, but seeing the finished product can expose a child to mature themes and frightening moments anyway, or gory scenes, which, if realistic, can elicit a negative response, even if you know how it’s made. Frightening dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, for example.
Yes, but the kids have seen the animatronics and the people working the dinosaurs. They’ve seen behind the curtain, as it were, and I would guess would find the whole thing fascinating, not scary.
When I was a kid, I used to read magazines like Fangoria, which had tons of behind-the-scenes photos from the set of horror movies, and articles explaining how they made the props, and so forth. Not the same thing as actually being on the set, of course, but still: I very clearly knew not only that these movies were fake, but how they were fake as well.
Didn’t stop me from having the shit scared out of me when I saw the movies, though.
When Wesley Snipes refused to come out of his trailer for the “ipod scene” in Blade Trinity, this is what Ryan Reynolds did knowing Snipes would only film the reaction shot and not know what he said.
I saw that film one night, having bought the DVD because I like Joseph Gordon Levitt. Once I finished it, I sat there on the couch motionless for a couple of minutes, then put it back on from the start with the commentary. Not because I loved it or anything. I had to hear for myself that the kid actors weren’t actually playing the scenes “as is.” As Foggy stated, no, they weren’t (in one scene, the adult actor lays his head of the chest of a child dummy, for example). It’s still one of the most harrowing movies I’ve ever watched.
I’ve heard a few stories of children watching ‘special’ cuts of their movie, just like with Danny Lloyd, but I’ve heard this did not apply to Linda Blair.
Holy crap. I have no idea what film sets you have been on as a visitor, but your post makes it pretty clear that you don’t work in the film industry. I’ve been a working Cinematographer for 36 years. Allow me to shed a bit of light and bring things into focus.
Here’s how it really works.
You shoot your matching overs in the same space with the same actors. If you’re shooting “dirty overs” ( i.e. the head and a bit of shoulder and arm are seen on the edge of the frame out of focus ) you try to keep the talent on set. Any actor worth their salt wants their colleagues to deliver the best work they can. You stay on set and do the dirty over if that’s what is called for. If a clean matching shot is called for, most good actors will stay on set and do the off-camera lines so that their colleague is acting with them.
Fair to say that some actors leave the set. Perhaps the Director has released them for the day or they need to shoot another scene and so (typically) the Script Supervisor will sit off-camera and read the lines to the actor on camera. Perhaps the two actors aren’t getting on well in real life and are rather unsupportive of one another.
Very few actors use cue-cards as a matter of course. Marlon Brando was a notable exception. ( Please know that this post is about filmmaking. Quite a few live television shows still utilize Cue Cards week in and week out, infamously Saturday Night Live. )
No film production would go through the expense of building a duplicate set in another city or state to shoot matching close-ups. Lunacy. It is quite fair to say that in this day of Green Screen and C.G.I. sets being used more and more for the entire set and background element build, you could very easily shoot Tom Cruise in Hollwyood, Florida and Meryl Streep in Silvercup Studios, Astoria New York and using pure C.G.I. make it appear that they are sitting in the same room.
But…that’s not what dracoi said. He/She made it clear that real sets were being discussed.
Now. To the issue of violence and violence or traumatizing scenes using children. First of all, we can do away with the semantics argument. Yes, a child who is 17 years and 364 days old is a minor in most states in the United States. This thread is talking about either children or barely post-pubescent youth.
I’ve been on quite a few sets with child actors. The crew keeps the bemusing and nonstop river of obscenities and double-entendres to a zero state. Very little yelling takes place, especially with small children acting in a scene. Usually ONE person on set speaks to the child ( aside from the Director ) to cut down on disturbing the kid’s concentration, whatever level that may exist at. By this I mean the normal adjustments made by various crew members on some sets might be spoken to an actor. Props, costume, Director of Photography, the 1st Assistant Director ( 1st A.D. ) all may have things to say to an actor. Not so with a kid. We try to keep it streamlined for several reasons.
As mentioned above, it keeps the confusion level down for the child actor.
Most states have rigid limits on how many hours per day a child can be on set working. Less chatter, more time shooting. More production gets completed.
Kids want to trust people. They learn to trust the Director and 1st A.D. and perhaps one other key person on set. ( aside from a family member or Guardian who is always on set no matter what when they are at work ).
We would all like to think that in every filmmaking situation, the safety of all actors and especially children is kept in the fore.
Lastly, on a very personal level, I adore filmmaking. I always have. If I found filmmaking to be as boring as the poster I quote says it is, I would have left the career decades ago. Instead, I love being on set. Every single day. At its most banal, we shoot the scenes with complete professionalism. At its most elating and ethereal, we the crew and they the actors conspire to create something that is so much greater than the sum of its parts that when the Director says “Cut”, we are all breathless.
I’ve only experienced a handful of those moments. But man. The possibility of those moments are what keeps me fully invested in every day at work.
Oh hell yeah. Set aside my life-experience outlined above.
I ADORE the movie “Jaws”. Know a shitload about how it was made, have both books written on the subject.
Watched it about 6 months ago for the first time in many years.
Was absolutely frightened by the first attack. Just numb.
Isn’t that the whole point of a good movie???
I read “American Cinematographer”. Read up on how the film “Gravity” was shot. Went to see it in 3-D. ( A sublime use of Negative Dimension 3D ). Was just floored by the look of it. Screw looking behind the curtain- it’s still fun to watch a movie !!!