The movie that I chose to watch the behind the scenes of was Rocky Balboa, the last movie in the Rocky series. What I found most interesting about the preproduction of this movie was that they didn’t build any sets. The house that Rocky lived in was an actual house that they bought in Philadelphia. They didn’t even renovate it, it was left as is. All the locations that they filmed in such as the market were actual places in Philadelphia that people went to in their daily lives. It was mentioned that they only had a certain amount of time to get the scenes done because after a little while, word would spread that “Rocky” was at the market and fans would show up. They had to hire extra security guards, but Stallone pushed through them so he could sign his Rocky autograph. According to the video, everyone knew Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, not by his actual name. People showed up and wanted Rocky signatures and pictures, as if Sylvester Stallone wasn’t a celebrity in his own right. This provided a challenge to filming since they had to get the outdoor scenes done so quickly. Where they filmed the final fight scene was an actual arena that was already filled with fans for another boxing match. Everything was so incredibly authentic is an industry where so much is fake.

    I also learned that the boxer Rocky faced, Mason Dixon, was the current light heavyweight champion of the world. He had never acted before and learned how to just for the Rocky movie. Sylvester Stallone commented on it saying that he wanted the most authentic people in the roles as possible, he wanted it to be real. On the subject of making things real, he also talked about the sound effects from the punching. Obviously, it was fake fighting so the sounds weren’t that of an actual fight. So they recorded fights and took out the punching sounds. Mason Dixon had lighter punching sounds since he was significantly faster than Rocky and Rocky had heavy punching sounds, the intense thuds that we associate with cinematic fighting.

    I noticed in the behind the scenes footage that whenever people were filmed having a conversation that it was filmed once, all the way through, from one side and then filmed from the other. This is probably a basic part of cinematography but I’ve never filmed dialogue so it was something new. Basically, one person stood right by the camera line and talked to the other person that was being filmed and then the camera switched sides. Much more efficient than cutting after each person has said a line and a lot easier to put together.

    Another thing that I never really thought about was accents. The woman who played Lil Marie has a heavy Irish accent and she spoke in an American accent throughout the entire movie. It was so good that I didn’t even notice it or give it a second thought. But in the video, her accent is so thick that I have a hard time believing she had such a convincing American accent.