There was no set into to the movie. One possibility was to be
this continuous shot, which turned out to be not as smooth as desired and not
long enough. The poker scene had over 50 minutes of raw footage, the vulgarities
that you saw in the finished film were actually the least offensive of what was
shot.
The poker shots in the into scene were completely improvised.
It occurred on the last day of shooting just after the poking and birthday
scene. The next location was not to be available for a few hours and the
director decided to fill that time with potentially usable footage.
After the poker footage was trimmed, the editor
put together a rough idea of how the poker scene and the previous
continuous scene could intertwine to the opening credits. After the
director's approval of the concept the opening was further refined.
The order of the opening credits was matched to the film Air
Force One.
The next scene is the library scene, where Stan
meets the unnamed student who introduces him to Facebook, and later
becomes Barnaby in the world of Facebook. This scene was one of
easier scenes to shoot, the only problems being the air conditioning
contaminated the sound and a few loud students who needed to be
silenced. One thing a sharp eye may notice is the computer screens
in this shot:
After:
The screen on the left is the computer the girl is
sitting at, when shot the screen was turned off. It was fixed by
duplicating the video of the screen on the right, reversing it, and
putting it over the screen on the left. In the current version this
shot has been zoomed into, leaving only about an inch of the screens
visible so that the brightness of the screens does not distract from
the scene.
Next was the Facebook montage scene, where Stan stays up late
browsing Facebook. This scene was shot about a week after the main shoot. If you
look closely you will notice that many of the friends he is adding resemble
those who are in the movie. (Picture left- Mike Haber is Stan the main
character)
The reason for this is the editor held off adding
any new friends for 3 weeks for this scene. Those 3 weeks being when
many of the people on the set added each other as friends. The hand
moving the mouse isn't Stan's either, it also belongs to the editor.
It was shot on a high resolution laptop screen, which doesn't suffer
the effects of a conventional monitor when shot on video.
The lighting for this scene was one of the trickiest, being
that it was shot during the day. Note the little bit of light leaking through
above the cameraman's head. It was shot in the editor's room, which became
overrun with equipment and wardrobe.
The camera man had to stand on the bed over Stan
to get this shot.
Next Stan wakes up to find the paper on his door.
The effect of the password was done by simply dissolving the stars
with white backgrounds over the password.
Yes we know there are fewer lines in the username
than there are letters, deal with it.
The scenes in Barnaby's office were the most troublesome to
light and shoot. There was a lack of equipment to suspend a light over the desk
to get the desired look, so the editor rigged up an overly elaborate (but
working) setup using 30 feet of nylon rope, a pencil, a light stand, two nails,
and a wad of dampened toilet paper.
The line of friends took the longest to
coordinate, but relatively quick to shoot. It used 40 feet of dolly
track and over 2 dozen extras.
Halfway through the shooting the extras got a nice
break and Quiznos lunch provided by the director. During that time
the crew and Al Dunn shot the Lauren Dexter scene.
Notice that the character Lauren Dexter magically
appears in the first shot of the line of friends, then she appears
off to the side in the next scene, and then slides back into the
line where she started.
To get Lauren Dexter to glide in this shot it
required the grip to pull the dolly with the above mentioned nylon
rope while lying flat on the ground. Note the grip's head on
the bottom of the right image.
After the Lauren Dexter scene there was originally
another scene:
This scene was taken out because the effects
weren't up to standards, and the scene itself was not critical to
the film.
Next was a shot that took numerous takes, both of
the dolly grips, and the camera man sitting on the dolly. The
random shots of people poking each other was originally a continuous
shot, unfortunatly even the best continuous shot was determined to
be too slow.
Notice the blue shirt on the left is the same one
poking the character with the longboard in the right image.
Originally the blue shirt stands up after getting poked, walks over
and pokes the longboard character. It was cut so that blue shirt
appears to remain still so as to maintain the theme in the film that
no one but Stan and Barnaby can walk in the world of Facebook.
The shots with the girls and relationships took the main dolly
and the longboard seen in the previous shot. The director took matters into his
own hands to get the reaction he wanted out of the main character
for this shot.
Next is the wall scene, If you wonder how we didn't get fined
for writing on the wall, take a close look at the seams. Two sections of quarter
inch drywall were purchased and painted by the director and brought up to the
6th floor dorm room, the pictures cover up the seam between the two sections. A
trip to Wal-Mart with a CD full of images is where the pictures came from.
Luck held out for the group scenes. All the doors
were unlocked allowing us to make use of them. The shots of Stan
looking in at the fucked up group was shot without everyone in the
room, just the director and the producers providing material for
Stan to react to.
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