Anatomy of a brilliant shot ft. Spiderman
How we recreated this iconic scene from Spiderman for Fello Finance #BombayLocale
People our age know only one Spiderman i.e., Tobey. I don’t associate/identify ourselves with the Spiderman(s) who came later on.
I know it is an age thing. It is just like our association with James Bond — where Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig are the only James Bond we identify with. Not the ones who came before him and the ones who will come after him.
In the first Spider-man film — although the whole film was brilliant there was one shot which has stayed with me. It was the shot where Peter Parker saves MJ from falling in the high school canteen — and magically(with newfound powers) gets hold of the actress(Kirsten Dunst) but also makes sure that her food tray remains intact and nothing falls.
Now this was the shot — which made us try it in our own living rooms and never did we succeed. Below is the video for the same.
Fast forward, we grew up and forgot all about the shot.
When the internet became accessible — it was interesting to know that it was pure stunts and there was no CGI involved in the shot.
Here are a few news articles about the same:
- https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-spider-man-scene-that-took-156-takes/
- https://www.koimoi.com/hollywood-news/did-you-know-spider-man-tobey-maguire-shot-for-around-16-hours-to-perfect-the-iconic-tray-catch-scene-as-it-had-no-cgi/
I won’t lie — our crazy folks at Bombay Locale always wanted to recreate it. But then often we are working with clients and are not afforded to get crazy on the projects. Interestingly — this time, we went crazy.
Inspired by a scene from a Spider-Man movie where Spiderman saves MJ without CGI, we aimed to replicate it efficiently. Unlike the original, we strived to minimize the number of takes and achieved our desired result without resorting to 156 shots.
Fello Finance’s campaign — #WhatAFello
As a team of engineers, we realised we had to accomplish this on a tight budget and within our timeline. We created a rig using basic physics (visuals in the video), consisting of magnets, solenoids, and electric circuits. We recreated the shot in our own rooms and flats, discussing and refining our approach.
Amey, Tanmay, and Astik from our team came up with suggestions, with Astik taking on the role of controlling the rig during the action. It is satisfying to have engineers on our team who contribute to our filmmaking process.
Filmmaking itself is like engineering, involving supply chain management, operations, and research. Finding a critical path in project management is crucial, and the same applies to filmmaking.
During the shoot, we had to be meticulous in explaining the desired expressions to the actors to maintain continuity. Kudos to the Fello team, Manish and Shourya, who had full faith in us to pull that off!
All the rehearsals over 4–5 days have helped us to iron out the issues and test the rig. The rig was a culmination of hours of brainstorming on the best way to pull this off. Being engineers, the idea of using magnets solenoids, and electrical circuits seemed viable on paper — but it had to be tested firstly on make-shift rigs. Hence we moved on to assembling the rig and our team did a fabulous job in a short span of time. After rigorous testing of the rig with different weights, we felt ready to pull this off. The execution has been documented in detail in the video.
The execution of the shot on the shoot date was a testimony to why filmmaking is the most collaborative process out there. The acumen of the director and DOP and the determination of our actors to give 200% and of course the whole crew supporting and cheering us on till we got a perfect shot.
The shot is a tribute to the original shot from the Spiderman movie and also a shout-out to all filmmakers thinking outside the box to create something interesting and challenging.
Know more at bombaylocale.com.
