[PG-HQ Dev Blog] War of the Worlds broken OOB

[Shad]

Andrew,

I just saw that movie Saturday night. Which scene are you in? Were you vaporized? Or were you fertilizer?

I'm on screen for all of about one second during the convoy scene approximately 48 minutes into the movie.

The scenes where Tom Cruise, the punk kid, and Dakota Fanning are driving through the countryside in the minivan were filmed in SW Virginia in and around Lexington, where I was a college student at the time.

They had an open call for extras and lots of us college kids tried out. Most of my classmates ended up being cast as "survivors" because they were fat, but I was an athlete at the time so I fit the bill for National Guard and got to ride around in the back of a truck dressed in full kit with a bunch of other REAL National Guard guys. That was fun.

In the scene the convoy looks quite long, but in reality it was very short and we just drove in circles all day for three days.

It was a lot of fun to see how movies are really made. One thing that stuck in my mind is a quick shot of a humvee blasting through a big puddle. They actually had a firetruck on hand to refill that puddle after every iteration! It all looks so natural after editing, of course.