It's dark. It's hot. Silhouetted trees loom over the park like monsters. Insects buzz in the grass.
A group of campers carrying sleeping bags heads to Camp Crystal Lake. Someone yells: "You're damned! ... Don't go to Camp Blood!" Then they laugh hysterically.
It's not a movie. It's the set of Friday the 13th, and the idiots doing the yelling are actually reporters shouting at visitors last June on the movie's set in Austin, Texas. SCI FI Wire was there.
During a visit to the set, reporters watched the filmmakers (which included director Marcus Nispel of Pathfinder) shoot scenes in which Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears) chases the film's protagonists, Clay (Supernatural's Jared Padalecki) and Whitney (Amanda Righetti), through an abandoned schoolbus at Camp Crystal Lake. The movie is a remake, re-imagining and reboot of the 1980 original film and its sequels and incorporates elements from the other movies to re-introduce Jason Voorhees to a new generation.
The set is outdoors, in Old Settlers Park outside Austin. It's night. Cranes hold overhead lights that illuminate a copse of trees under which lies the abandoned schoolbus, overturned on its left side, overgrown with weeds.
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The scene's action takes place within and on top of the bus. Jason--hockey mask, torn shirt, ratty pants--chases Clay and Whitney. They scream, claw, try to crawl away.
"I think I scream more than I talk in this movie," Righetti says wryly. "There's a lot of screaming and, you know, some dialogue, but yes, definitely a lot of screaming."
In one shot, Jason smashes Clay's face through a bus window. Over and over. Although it's fake glass, and Jason's not really using that much force, it's still Jared Padalecki's real face going through that window.
Between takes, Mears as Jason pals around with the reporters, who are only too eager to check him out. Mears' makeup is intense: it includes latex-foam prosthetics over his entire head, neck and torso to give the muscular actor Jason's signature scarring and stringy hair, as well as a scoliosis-like hump.
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Mears, a 6-foot-5 stunt actor, is the opposite of his character. Gracious, friendly, he shakes hands all around: "Very pleased to meet you." He poses for pictures. It's disconcerting to have Jason Voorhees grab your neck, machete raised, even if it's just for a photo op.
Mears certainly looks the part. Over his makeup prosthetics, Mears wears a torn dirty T-shirt, weathered brown pants and boots and a ragged hooded fatigue jacket. Finishing off the ensemble: a long machete in an improvised holster made from a horse bit.
Producer Brad Fuller explains the approach to the new Friday the 13th. "I think that what we added is we made Jason Voorhees a really viable killer again," he says. "And he doesn't teleport: he's not supernatural, he's not 8 feet tall. He's a real person who lives in the woods, and these kids stumble across what he considers to be his own place, and they pay a price for it. And he's ruthless." Friday the 13th opens Friday the 13th of February 2009. --Patrick Lee, News Editor
