ENDA Episode 85→ The time when ENDA shares his Production’s Diary (Part 2)

Film shoots can be unpredictable and sometimes downright bizarre. But nothing compares to what a group of college friends experienced when a single misunderstanding ended with a S.W.A.T team pointing guns at them.

It all began as part of their final short film for a Cinematography course in college. A team of six people: three guys and three girls. They wanted to shoot a parkour-themed action sequence: the protagonist running from a group of thugs, while attempting to escape their lair.

Ambitious both in concept and execution, they had to deal with various issues:

➡️ Location: an abandoned disco on the outskirts of the city, near the beach. With no electricity, they had to rely solely on daylight. Naturally, it was cloudy that day.

➡️ A big cast of thugs plus a parkour specialist. Connections from the director and an art department member made that happen.

➡️ The art department went all out with makeup, props (mostly guns), and costumes, making the thugs look uncomfortably real. No one suspected that believability might backfire….

On the day of the shooting, the crew was filming in the most “guerilla” style: minimal gear (a steady cam, a boom, and a few bags) and no major setups that might hint at a legitimate film production. From the outside, no one could have figure out that everything happening there was fictional.

But as I said before, everything started with a misunderstanding...

During a break between shots, an actor, still in costume, decided to pretend-fire his prop gun out a window at the beach below during a quick intermission.

Unluckily, a family with children happened to be on the beach that day. Seeing multiple “thugs” with large, realistic-looking guns in the windows of an eerie abandoned disco, they panicked and did what they thought right...

Some time later while they were shooting a scene in one of their upper floors, the communication with the producer that was outside of the disco got suddenly cut in the middle of a call. The crew sent someone to see what was happening,

When this crew member went downstairs to check on them, he saw the producer and his boyfriend on their knees, being retained by the members of a S.W.A.T team. He tried to rush back, but the moment he entered, another squad was already climbing upstairs.

At that very moment, the director was shooting a scene with all the “thugs” brandishing their convincingly fake guns. And that’s when it happened: the S.W.A.T officers burst in, and from their perspective, it was exactly what it looked like: a group of armed criminals holding a building. Guns pointed everywhere, confusion on both sides, and a once-fun college film shoot turned into a high-stakes standoff.

What happened next? Well…that’s for another episode.

The journey continues…