Trygve's digital diary / February 25th, 1999 Well, these days my life has gotten pretty much taken up by the wonders of filmmaking. Besides all the usual stuff that goes into getting ready for shooting, most days I'm doing a couple of hours of stunt and stage combat fighting.

Some days that involves doing a few hours straight of rolls, falls, flips, leaps, and several acrobatic maneuvers that were supposed to be one of the above, but turned out to be yet another complex and vigorous way of landing on the ground. Douglas Adams' technique for learning to fly has not worked so far. Other days are devoted to learning to throw (and catch) kicks, punches, and other modes of attack so that they look real on film--usually, this involves doing them quite differently than you would if you had to do them for real, because real fighting just doesn't look real enough when the camera sees it. Plus, real fighting is likely to hurt too much and be over too fast; this is much more like professional wrestling, only you spend more time doing flips through the air and using swords and sticks and whatever other weapons might be handy. Compared to a couple of hours of stage combat, an aerobics class is hardly enough to work up a sweat.

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Rehearsals aren't without their share of mishaps; I certainly get enough bruises from the blocks and kicks and other moves that are more real than intended. With the speed that everything is happening at, sometimes things hit a bit harder than is really comfortable, but at least when that happens during filming, you get some good sound effects out of it do you might not have to add them in later.

I've also managed to get some minor cuts when someone else took out a couple of eight-foot fluorescent tubes with a staff--that's an exciting enough effect that maybe we should use that in the movie. Or, maybe not. Learning how to do back rolls and spring back to my feet was tougher than most of the skills I've practiced--not because of the movement itself, but because I keep having my hair land on the ground first and then my hands land on my hair before thrusting myself back upwards and onto my feet, leaving a handful of hair behind. I hope I have hair left for the movie; I think I'm pretty set against doing the mohawk thing, so next time, I'm remembering to bring my hair ties. Yep, that's the plan.

Here's one of the locations we're using in the film; pretty cool, eh? But wait until we get it filled with extras, special effects, and a few of the bands we're using in the film and for the soundtrack. Stay tuned (um, sorry about that) for more exiting details....