This was the first scene we filmed with dialogue. That means it's the first scene with more than one person in it. Crazy right? We got this far (almost halfway) without dialogue. But we made up for it with this scene.
In this scene, Astrid and Hiccup have almost three pages of dialogue. That's a lot of memorizing, but they did it. And they did it over and over and over.
My favorite line of dialogue?
"You're right, it's far too dangerous, I'd probably die before making the jump, there's a lot better ways to go: sinkhole, volcano, giant centipede. I could be incinerated tonight in the sheep pen tonight if I wanted. Why drown when you could be burnt whole?"
The hardest bit to get right was, for sure, when Astrid sees Toothless and pushes Hiccup down to protect him. Getting it choreographed took time and even after that, working in the dialogue and then getting it all timed right. It was hard. We messed up so many times and laughed so much.
Mason had to hit a specific line of dialogue right as Miriam reached a specific place in front of the camera, then she had to turn, push him down, while he had to land, stand up and grab her axe from her. It was complicated . . . which means . . . we got SO MANY great bloopers. Sometimes Miriam would miss Mason or almost hit him with her axe. Sometimes he would fall too soon or not at all. Sometimes they would land or walk in behind of trees. And (often) they would laugh mid shot. It was so mcuh fun. I can't wait to edit that stuff up.
Our lovely Astrid!
And I was there too :) even though you would never know it.
I have yet to find a knot that keeps the actor's arm guards on for a full shoot. I keep experimenting. I'm getting closer, but they still come undone mid shot. But I kind of like it because it makes me feel needed. Otherwise I'm just giving directions from behind the camera and that can begin to feel lazy, especially when my actors are doing hard stuff like running or falling or climbing.
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