Bat-Pole Woes, Part 2

Citizens,

Robin the boy wonder reporting in again from the secret location of the Derivative's Office Hideout! Well, actually, I am at work. But, the office I am in is where Joey and I filmed the Derivative's Office for episodes 3 and 4. As today is kind of slow, I thought I would finish my post on the woes of the Bat-poles. And true to Batman style, let's begin in this way:

So far we have seen:

- How Kenn and Joey constructed the Bat-poles
- How we planned/shot the sequence of entering the bat-cave
-How we planned to operate the bat-poles

Holy Super Special Effects Batman! The best is yet to come!

So, anyway, the first scene we filmed with the bat-poles was the bat-cave scene. We did two different shots: one of Batman and Robin sliding in full costume and jumping off the poles and running off, a shot from the ground of us sliding down into the camera. (For triva purposes, these shots were where Joey and I initially decided to "tape" our wide angle lense to my camera, since it would not fit manually. This later became our style for the duration of the filming.)

Joey and I decided to mount the poles by jumping on them at the same time and sliding down at a controlled rate. Initally we had talked about jumping off ladders (off screen of course) and sliding down the poles. This we reasoned would be difficult and dangerous and thus we decided upon just jumping as high as we could, tucking ourselves up as much as possible once on the pole (to increase the length of the ride) and sliding down. Now, remember how in my last post I described our base as unstable? Well, nothing changed! So, it not only became a shot which required extensive coordination to jump/slide down at the same time. But, Joey and I had to be balanced enough not to knock over the poles. This was acutally quite difficult and in this scene and ensuing scenes, we ended up tiping the bat-pole frame over and falling off at some odd angles. Thankfully, no one was injured. This was probably due to the fact that we were only sliding at total of about 3-4 feet before we hit the ground seeing as the poles were only 7 feet.

Or was that really a blessing? Yes, as I found out, much to my horror that by having only 7 feet of actualy pole (5 or so feet which is on screen), the distance of the slide is very limited, producing a very shortand seemingly almost worthless shot. To make matters worse, our shots always began with Batman and Robin just at the top of the poles. And, that's right, you guessed it, this makes it very hard to link various shots together to create the effect that Joey and I are sliding down a shaft into the bat-cave. However, remember how I said we broke the bat-cave shot up into 2 shots? It turns out that that one shot of us sliding down onto the camera is what saved our necks and made this effect actually look ok. That critical shot allows us to have a transition between Bruce and Dick hitting the automatic costume changer to being in full costume. If we had not take that shot, as I didn't want to initally, we would have been stuck with Bruce and Dick sliding out of a shot but Batman and Robin starting already in the shot and thus making all the effort to build and shoot the bat-poles worthless. Lesson? When you film a movie, film lots of angles and do lots of takes.

Anyway, our first Bat-pole scene went well, despite the problems of balancing. It's acutally a fine art, I must say, to jump on a pole, slide down wearing tights and cowboy boots without knocking the set over. It's all about having a nice controlled jump followed by a nice controlled descent. Further, Joey and I had to jump on at the same time to prevent an unbalance in the poles. The best thing about this shot was this was the first time Joey and I actually saw each other in full costume and together on film. And let me tell you, the effect was just amazing. When you spend a whole summer working on building a costume, scripting an episode, and getting it together to see all your hard work bear fruit is just purely...amazing and is one of the few privillages reserved for film makers.

But, not all the memories with the bat-poles were happy ones. Unfortunately Joey learned the hard lesson about being a male and what the blunt force of a metal rod can do to ones groin when there is a high speed collision. Specifically, the scene I am talking about is the filming of the study scene in Wayne Manor. The set up was Bruce and Dick running over to grab the poles and slide into the bat-cave. Well, Joey and I were a little rushed because we were trying to rush off to see a showing of Spiderman 2. Thus, we were trying to get everything we needed done in a hurry. That probably contributed to it. Also, Joey's nack for sustaining injuries while filming also probably helped. Anyway, whether it was the rush or the nack, Joey managed to injure himself sliding down on the bat-poles not once, but twice. Painful? Yes. Hilarious none-the-less? Certinally.

Finally, our last and final shot of batman was with the bat-poles as well. It was the shot in which Bruce and Dick would slide past the Automatic Costume Changing (ACC), flip the switch, and slide out of sight. This scene had one large problem: we did not have an ACC. So, in the theme of the film: if we don't have it, just make it we made an ACC. I found a black electrical box in my basement. I think it was a connector to a TV or a VCR. Then, we just taped a bunch of glow sticks to it and made one of the glow sticks a handle. It looked...well, terrible. But, it was a prop and I believe it is only on screen for a duration of about 2-3 seconds, if that. However, the ACC added a new challenge for us: Can we slide down the bat-poles, hit something, and keep sliding without unbalancing ourselves? The answer: No! No! No! No! err..yeah, Yeah! No! Basically, we shot the scene about 6 times and of those times, we could only use 2 takes because the rest of the time, Joey and I tipped the frame and went crashing off camera. So, that's another tip for sliding down the bat-poles kids: keep it simple.

But, truth be told, the Bat-poles are one of my favorite effects in the film. They were just one of those elements of the 1966 show which, even if you see today, you think of Adam West and Burt Ward. Further, when Joey and I wanted to re-vamp our Batman movie and do it bigger and better than we did before it was a must and even though it provoked rage and frusteration and didn't come out nearly the way Joey and I planned, I am still very happy we filmed with them. As of right now, the Bat-poles are safely stored in a shed in the middle of my woods. Will they ever see action again with our dynamic duo? well, maybe if Joey and I ever make a 5th and 6th episode. But, they will definately be longer the next time. So, until that time, the bat-poles will lie safely in my prop warehouse until the heroes of justice need them again.

ZOKO!

Robin