Day 12: Killer down the Water Slide!

We are over $2000!! Thanks to everyone who has donated! All of the support is amazing. I truly cannot thank you guys enough. Today's film story is about the water slide scene from my 2nd feature, Mousetrap 2. This may seem like a random scene to a lot of people and that's cause it really is. It was a lot of fun to film, though, and it has a pretty good story to it.

So in the film, Kyle and Colin are running from the Mouse (THE KILLER) when they come to a drain tube. They go down it and it is like a water slide. That is the idea that was running through my head at the time when I was writing the script, but in the film it is pretty much just a water slide. I show them entering a drainage pipe, but the transition is not super good from the drain entrance to the water slide. It is still an exciting and funny scene in the film.

I contacted a water park passed the Twin Cities called Wild Mountain and they let us film at the water park for free. They told us to arrive early in the morning before the park opened and we could have reign to the slides. The park is 3 hours away from Windom so we went up the night before and spent the night at my cousin's house in Minneapolis. The crew is Colin, Matt, Kyle, Brian, and I. We get lost in Minneapolis that night trying to find my cousins house, but finally find it. The next morning we leave really early to head to the water park. We arrive at the park and start to get our equipment out. We are ready to get filming.

There is only one issue. When we go to the slides they are all off. No water is running! I go into the main building and ask for the manager. I talk to him and he wasn't aware we were coming. I told him the whole story about how I contacted the owner and we got permission. He asks a lady who must have been the lady I talked to because she tells us we are good. They get the water running and tell us the park opens in 20 minutes. I couldn't believe it! 20 minutes to film everything?! Brian gets on the Mouse costume and we head up to the top of the slides. As we are about to go down a lifeguard comes up and stops us. She looks at us like we are crazy. Everyone is wearing their clothes and Brian is wearing jeans, a jean jacket, and the Mouse mask. We tell her the story and then the guy yells up to her that we are good.

We head down the big tube slide, but we barely can move. The slide is meant for tubes so this meant when you sat down to go you barely moved. So Brian, Kyle, and Colin had to run and dive down the slide. In the movie there is even a shot of the Mouse running down the slide and slipping and slamming into the slide. After a couple of times going down the big tube slide people started showing up. We had to wait in line to ride the slide with the camera and everyone wearing their street clothes. I'm sure all of the kids who were there were so confused. We then moved to the other slides, but none of that footage made it into the film. So we ended up with a 20 or 25 second scene that we spent 2 days on with the driving and spending the night. It was a lot of fun, but maybe not the wisest idea.

Lesson I learned: Everything looks great on paper, but you have to look at how realistic your goals are.