During their four-hour filming session‚ in late October,‚ Deering said they were able to get through 60 to 70 percent of the filming.
“It was hectic. We had all our actors had different schedules and it was hard to match them,” said Deering. “We had only four and a half hours to actually film due to lighting. We had to be on top of our game for this one.”
He said that at that rate, they should be able to complete the film within a month the editing in the month after that.
In The Dark Knight spoof, the Evil Iguana crew simply found a location and improvised the rest. But now that Evil Iguana’s become “serious,” they’re using scripts.
Deering admitted to having used minimal equipment in the past compared to the lighting and audio equipment and other fancy machinery, including a tripod for “the first time ever,” used to make ” Batman Portraits of Evil: Silent Night ” the best it could be.
Evil Iguana Kyle Bridges wrote the screenplay for “Batman Portraits of Evil: Silent Night.” While Bridges’ helped out writing some of the jokes for the trailer spoof, this is his first full-length screenplay. Deering said Bridges has some ideas for future full-length Evil Iguana films he will write screenplays for should “The Dark Knight Portraits of Evil: Silent Night” become a success.
Deering said that a trailer for the film should be ready in the next month, and that Blast will be the first to have it.
“The‚ Dark Knight” trailer spoof
“The Dark Knight” spoof had been the biggest undertaking Evil Iguana tackled when the released it over the summer. Deering said the idea first came to him when he saw the original photograph of Heath Ledger as the Joker that was released virally by Empire magazine.
He thought it would make an awesome Halloween costume, and his friend Joe Korbel — who ended up playing Batman in both films — decided to get a Batman costume to complete the pair.
“We realized how much money we were dishing out on these costumes just for like a Halloween party, and we were like, “ËœWe need to get something more out of this instead of just a Halloween party,'” Deering said. “So we’re like, “ËœWhat if we filmed a Batman movie?’ We didn’t know much about the movie, so we’re like, “ËœWhat if we spoofed the trailer?'”
Ironically enough, Deering ended up playing “Watchmen” antihero Rorschach instead of the Joker for Halloween this year.
It was at this point that Deering and the rest of Evil Iguana started plotting out what their spoof would look like. While a lot of the jokes were planned out ahead of time, much of the dialogue in their spoof was taken directly from “The Dark Knight” trailer, which Deering said the group watched “like 500 times.”
“We started writing jokes up for each scene, trying to like figure out what was going on in each scene, and then we started scoping out all over the place, like locations,” Deering said. “We searched neighborhoods by our house, we went to Chicago and scoped out locations that looked like [places the trailer was] filmed at. And then we got all the rest of the guys involved, and we started casting other characters, and then it started to come together and we just sat down.”
The guys made a list of props, shooting locations, a schedule and a list of scenes. It took three weeks to film the trailer and three months to plan it out.
Deering and company also had to get permission to shoot in various locations like a police station, hospital and a local Italian restaurant.
Deering said that the production group had to make do with the only decent equipment they had: a nice video camera and professional editing software. But a lack of funds and fancy equipment didn’t stop these kids. To film a scene of Batman riding a moped, Deering sat on the roof of Murphy’s moving vehicle.
Murphy’s car wasn’t the only vehicle abused in the process.‚ Deering’s car took quite a beating when they reenacted Batman’s tumble onto a black SUV.
“He fell on my car and, yes, there was a huge dent,” said Deering. “We were trying so hard to find a van, and we couldn’t find anything, so I was like, “ËœWe need this shot. Screw it. Just jump on my car.’ And I was like, “ËœWe’re doing this in one take, because I know it’s going to dent the hood.’ Luckily, I was getting rid of the car soon anyways, and, yeah, we did it in one take, and he jumped, and we were like, “ËœOh, that’s a huge dent. Alright.'”
“We just made stuff up to make it work,” he said.