Pictures from last weekend’s final battle are now up in the gallery. Thanks to Paul Eenhoorn and JJ Meston for providing these pictures. Some more pictures are available on the blog of one of the other guys that made it out for the weekend. If you happen to have some pictures from the weekend that you wouldn’t mind sharing, send them to warriorsend@hotmail.com and we’ll make sure they get posted.

Update: new pictures added to the final battle gallery (2005/10/24)

Of all the shoots that I’ve been on throughout this movie, none have given me the feeling of satisfaction that last weekend’s did. There have been a handful of shoots where everything came together and looked incredible behind the camera, but nothing quite like all the pieces of the final battle.

I went into this weekend nervous and worried that we just wouldn’t be able to pull the battle off. When I showed up late on Friday night and there were less than 30 people on site, I definitely was a little more worried. Luckily, more people showed up Saturday morning to help out. Seeing everyone lined up in costume, looking like a legit army, gave me a lot more confidence. After the first “Action!” call of the day, I had the feeling that this was going to be another one of those special shoots where it all came together just right.

My first action of the day was setting up the camera about 40 yards in front of a huge line of archers, who proceeded to shoot arrows straight at me. None hit me or the camera, but you won’t catch me on the receiving end of a few volleys of arrows again. Even though none of the arrows had tips, it still was very unnerving watching all these arrows fly through the air at you. I’m pretty sure that was the point I was confident that Bjorn’s quest for epic would be realized.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly, with people pulling double duty as both good and bad guys to help swell the ranks of the armies. We had a few charges, some clashing of swords and shields, and soldiers getting killed left and right. It was quite a day, one that I won’t forget for a long time.

Many, many thanks go out to everyone who sacrificed one or both days of their weekend to come help out with the movie. We definitely could not have achieved what we did without all of your help. A special thanks goes out to the Seattle Knights, who went above and beyond the call of duty by training everyone how to use their weapons. If we didn’t have professionals available, I’m sure we would have ended up with far more injuries than we did.

View the Trailer
Quicktime - 320×180 - 3.4 Mb

Back in early September, the crew made a trip to Montana to do some filming, which was well worth it. Even though we had to do a bit of hiking through snow to get to our location, we toughed it out and made the best of it. It turned out that the best of the weekend wasn’t the filming, it was when we got to watch the teaser trailer that Jody had put together. Even though the trailer was only a minute long, everyone who saw it was thrilled. Seeing the film pieced together and set to music was such a satisfying feeling, I really felt like everyone’s hard work was paying off. Thanks to Jody’s effort, the teaser trailer is now available for everyone to see, hopefully you will enjoy it.