Day 28: Rooftop Chase Scene

Today's film story is about the rooftop chase scene from Sundog. This is one of my favorite chase scenes I have ever filmed. It was extremely challenging, somewhat illegal, and a whole lot of fun. The idea came from watching too many Bourne films which I am a huge fan of. The bigger and more intense the chase, the better. The only problem was I do not have millions of dollars to work with. Heck, I had no money to work with for this scene. So then the question became "How do we pull of a rooftop chase scene without any safety equipment or permits?" The answer was quite simple; just do it.

So I went to each business downtown on the street we were filming on and asked if we could film on their roofs. (Almost) every business said yes. Some required us to sign waivers while others just let us. We spent a couple days deciding how the chase would go and how they would get from high rooftop to lower rooftop. The biggest challenge was when we came to a spot where one rooftop was about 15 feet taller than the other rooftop. We decided to green screen the actors jumping off of it and do the rest in post.

This chase scene involved 6 people. Matt and Greg running away with the code while Colin and Kyle chased them. The SWAT Team is not far behind. Having the SWAT Team involved meant we needed to have guns up on the roof. This meant going to the police to get permission. They were skeptical of the idea, but told us we could use the guns on the roof as long as we had a sign saying we were filming. They said not to have guns on street level. Well, we needed to have guns on street level for 2 or so shots so we did it anyways. Little did I know the newspaper would come out and take a picture of the filming going on with us on street level with guns.

This was not a huge deal, but super ironic that this picture would make the paper. The chase scene turned out really good and I am super happy with the final product.

What I learned: You don't need millions of dollars to pull off a crazy awesome action scene.