Bean's Godzilla News

10-01-97

I just realized they updated the official godzilla pagetoday. well i got a couple new animations from there today .

Plus I also got the new godzilla roar in wav form, Here.

Also this picture from the movie

10-01-97

I just got a newsletter from one of the crew of Godzilla it is as follows

"by Will Plyler

>From New York to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Oahu the "Godzilla" film crew has filmed for 80 days now. Our shooting crew of over 200 men and women has faced rain, mini twisters, exploding manhole covers, rats, cockroaches, sunburn, and lots and lots of fish all to bring you the latest incarnation of Godzilla. And now you can be apart of this ongoing adventure…

Each day during filming, a breakdown of the previous day’s work, or progress report if you like, was distributed. The production report is a record of the amount of time spent filming the previous day, the actors and crew members that worked, the number of feet of filmed exposed along with other pertinent data, and most importantly of course… what time lunch was "called"! So for the next nine months I’m going to provide similar information to you the Godzilla fan. I’ll tell you what we’ve been filming each week, how the special effects and editing are coming along, who the different people are working on the film, and heck, I’ll even tell you about my lunches (the key to making it in this town). I’ll take you behind the scenes to learn about the editing, computer generated imaging, sound mixing, music scoring, and a whole lot more.

Of course the first question you may be asking yourself, and if you’re not you should be, is "Who is ‘Will’ and what the heck does he know?" Well, if I may talk about "me" for a moment (a favorite Hollywood topic) I’ll let you know what I do on the film. Drum roll please… I am "The Assistant to the Executive Producer" of the film. Pretty impressive title, huh? But what does all of this really mean? My boss is responsible for not only overseeing the budget and schedule of the film but the entire shooting crew including our special effects group. My job is to make sure his coffee mug is filled each day, the pencils are sharpened, the seat cushion is fluffed, and the air conditioning temperature is set to a perfect 73.52 degrees. All right I’m just kidding… he doesn’t drink coffee. No, in reality it’s my job to help him keep up with all that, so that means there’s very little that goes on with the film that I don’t know about – which is good news for you.

Since this is my first report I should probably catch you up on what’s been happening so far. As you probably know by now, the movie was written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Roland is directing and Dean is producing. We started filming in New York…. Manhattan to be exact, on May 3rd 1997. The film has an all star cast including (but not limited too) Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Maria Pitillo, Hank Azaria, Kevin Dunn, Arabella Field, Michael Lerner, Philippe Bergeron, Vicki Lewis, Doug Savant, Harry Shearer, and Malcolm Danare. Shooting took place from Saturday through Wednesday. This allowed us to have at least two "weekend" days in our shoot so that we could receive permission to film at sites unavailable during the week, like Wall Street and the South Street Seaport. All of our exterior shoots involved rain. And for your information, rain equals pain. A pain in the butt…. a pain in the neck… and a pain on the dry cleaning bill. When we wet an area down we really wet it down. Our mechanical effects crew used huge cranes to raise special water pipes over the sets. They would then pump hundreds of gallons of water onto the set to create rain… even if it was already raining! Filming went very well and New York looked great.

We returned to Los Angeles on May 26th. Shooting continued bright and early at 7:30 am on the 27th at the Sony Studios in Culver City. Most of our filming took place on Stage 15. There were as many as eight sets at a time on that stage. From a New Jersey apartment to a New York roof top to the bridge of a giant ship we covered the stage floor from wall to wall. Additional sets were constructed on Stages 27, 29, and 30 - each with one gigantic set. Some of our sets were over five stories high. Not only did we film on the Sony Lot, but we also spent a few weeks in downtown Los Angeles, using locations to double for New York City. With some simple redressing (changing advertisements, covering street signs, and a dozen or so yellow cabs) we were able to create very convincing New York streets right in the heart Los Angeles. Since downtown LA is much less congested at night than New York, it was easier to film our more complicated and exciting chase sequences through the streets here.

In addition to our main unit filming, we had a second unit filming extra footage to enhance battle scenes as well as provide many of the spectacular shots you will see that are too time consuming for our first unit to film. When all is "shot" and done, we will have filmed over 400,000 feet of film, and that’s not including all film for the special effect shots. I’ll tell you more about our 2nd Unit in later issues.

So there’s your first taste of "Godzilla". I hope you, the reader, will take time to write me about questions you have about the making of the movie. I will tell you everything I can, but some things are secret till next Memorial Day when Godzilla hits the silver screen. Next week, I’ll cover our filming in Hawaii and maybe even throw in a few tanning tips.…"

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