Eustace vs. Reepicheep, More Dragon Attack Details

We recently received this report from ‘Loren’:

I was recently at the filming site for VDT and I saw them filming 2 different scenes. One was the one where the dragon attacks the ship and the other was Eustace and Reepicheep’s ‘fight scene’.

Dragon Attack

The directions for the dragon attack I think we already know about. All the actors were on the ship while the director (or at least someone with an American accent) gave instructions like “okay, the dragon’s coming up to the ship, he’s flying to one, now he’s at two, now he’s at three, okay now he’s on the mast!’ At one point I saw Drinian walk down the stairs looking very important.

The crew of the ship were running around while Georgie was on a higher level of the ship with a young girl. Before the dragon came, the scene consisted of Lucy having a conversation with her. When the dragon does come Lucy ducks down and forces the girl down with her, but when the ship’s crew start to fire at the dragon when he’s on the mast, Lucy shouts ‘what’s he doing?!!!’ or ‘what are are they doing?!!’ or something like that, obviously she is not happy with the fact that the dragon is being shot at.

Eustace vs. Reepicheep

The other scene I could only see that Eustace comes up to the edge and looks over the side of the ship with a sword, I get the feeling he thinks he’s somehow forced Reepicheep into the water. Then a man with a greenscreen mouse comes over and places it on the ropes near Eustace, Eustace sees him and then they go off out of view to the centre of the ship, but I can guess what’s going on because the director (or whoever it was) is saying to the Dawn Treader crew “okay guys, you’re clapping, you’re laughing you’re enjoying the fight”.

Later the scene was redone using a more realistic looking mouse, and they shot some footage with the silver ball. They alternated between shooting the scene with a still ship and with the ship rocking.

Around the Set

Those are the only two scenes I saw. Aside from this I saw Douglas Gresham, wearing his trademark hat, Mark Johnson (who was spending a lot of time around the stuntmen’s tent), Skandar (a few times, but only for like a second), Georgie (likewise), Will and that mysterious young girl…

More exciting for me though, was when a stunt faun and a stunt dwarf came up to where the spectators were behind a fence and talked to us for a while. There were a few little kids there and the stunt dwarf was giving them high fives, I asked him if I could have one too so I got one. The stunt faun explained that as his role was uncredited in the film, he had been given the title of ‘Random Faun’ and that that led to him being called ‘Randy the faun’. I was most excited when Shane Rangi came up to talk to us. I got a bit frustrated because the little kids were just throwing random comments at him like ‘are you a gorilla?’ (he was in his minotaur suit, just without his head) when I finally got to talk to him about his roles as General Otmin and Asterius he seemed very pleased that he was recognized for being something other than a ‘gorilla’. I saw a few props, mainly just barrels and ropes and swords. I’d also like to point out that there was one extra (one of the DT crew) whose name was Herrman who seemed desperate to be famous because he spent almost all of his downtime in front of the gate where all the spectators were and let’s just say he was a little eccentric. If you waved at him he would raise his hand and stare at you for like ten seconds and then he would stare at you every time he walked past. He also at one point started giving all these little kids bags of nuts and prunes through the gate. It was kinda weird seeing a Telmarine drinking Gatorade while listening to an iPod…not to mention the faun with an iPhone!

We’re hoping to get pictures soon, so keep checking this story for updates!

UPDATE: Three new pictures from the set have been posted on this blog. The last one looks like it could be related to the Eustace/Reepicheep fight (notice the stuffed Reep stand-in). Thanks to Icarus.