Night Battle

Posted by Shannon and Sara Burns at 4:27 pm on Aug. 21, 2007.

This past week was mainly focused on one scene, the battle at the beginning of the movie. This battle is fought during the night, so we stayed up several nights to film. Wednesday night we filmed some exploding catapult shots. (We went to bed at 8:30 a.m.)

The catapult that we built

Thursday night we filmed the sword fight between Hengest and Justinian. Quinlain was Hengest’s stunt double for the fight. During the fight Quinlain accidentally hit Justinian right above the eye with his fake axe. After a brief moment of panic, Justinian said that he would leave the cut until we finished filming, because it added to the scene. We went to bed early, at 4:00 a.m.!

Chad giving instructions to Justinian and Hengest.

Friday was the second most important filming day of the movie. Over 130 people were at our house throughout the day! In the afternoon, we filmed the first part of this scene, where the villagers are preparing for the coming attack. We had some great extras! We also a bunch of animals in the village. It looked quite realistic.

Chad directing

The big picture on set

One of the village animals

Some of our great extras

Watching the monitor

Adria, Artos’s sister

After dark, we filmed the attack scene, where the villagers are attempting to defend themselves against the Saxons. The Saxons broke down the door using their battering ram. We filmed all night and into the early morning, finally crashing in our beds around 9:00 a.m.!

Hengest with one of his henchmen

Artos being captured and taken into slavery

Hengest taking loot from the village

Monday night, we filmed a quick shot of one of our houses exploding when a Saxon fire bomb hits it.

The house exploding

The house after the explosion

Sara and Shannon (your authors)