Corona | Coming Attractions

Five minutes away from where I live, 20th Century Fox has set up a massive outdoors greenscreen set for Rise of the Apes.

This week the crew appears to be in the process of preparing for filming. Dozens of workers have been erecting a three-sided greenscreen wall surrounding a vacant lot. The area that's cordoned off by the three-story greenscreens is roughly the size of a football field. There are two lifts stationed on the short-sided parts of the set that have theater-sized greenscreens on them which operators can raise and lower. A white cloth banner has been fixed above the part of the set where the actors will be performing, likely to keep them dry should any rain appear in the forecast. It might also serve to reflect some of the lighting back down on the field.

20th Century Fox has advised the people living around here that they will be filming for three weeks. During the shoot there will be a lot of activity going on including helicopters flying overhead, controlled fireballs and explosions. So, summed up: there'll be apes running amok, fireballs reaching into the sky, cats and dogs living together and mass hysteria (my apologies to Dr. Peter Venkman.)

I can only surmise what the crew will be filming hut it's not a secret that in the third act of Rise of the Apes Caesar, the first mutated, intelligent ape, leads a revolution against humanity. I'm placing my bets that we're looking at where director Rupert Wyatt will be filming those action sequences. Fox has already confirmed that the apes will be created by Weta Digital and be motion captured from actors. Judging from the few dozen people I saw milling about the rehersals for the mo-cap actors has probably already begun.

More as it develops.

In this next photo you can see some of the people working on the set floor. It looked like they were doing rehersals, running around and then stopping, regrouping and running off again.