This is the al­ter­nate fan se­quence I made for the DVD ver­sion of the Grem­lins 2 "film break" scene. I made it alone, in a two months pe­ri­od, with (com­put­er-​en­hanced) pup­pets I re-​cre­at­ed for this pro­ject.

WATCH THE MAK­ING OF !!!

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MORE IN­FO:

WHAT IS IT?

In the mid­dle of the movie Grem­lins 2, there is a se­quence where the film seems to break, and where the grem­lins in­vade the pro­jec­tion booth. For the VHS edi­tion in the ear­ly 90's, they reshot a spe­cial se­quence where the VHS tape seemed to be torn apart and in which the grem­lins in­vad­ed a John Wayne movie. The DVD just kept the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal ver­sion.
This is the al­ter­nate se­quence I made, sup­posed to re­place the the­atri­cal one on the DVD.

HOW IS IT MADE?

The crea­tures ef­fects are all made with pup­pets. I made a new mold out of a hard cast of one of the orig­i­nal sculp­tures from the pro­duc­tion. I cre­at­ed a batch of new foam pup­pets es­pe­cial­ly for this pro­ject. Their per­for­mances are en­hanced by com­put­er ef­fects, which makes them able to do near­ly any­thing, from run­ning to jump­ing or fa­cial ex­pres­sions. The en­tire shoot­ing takes place in a blue­screen stu­dio, ar­ranged in my base­ment, in or­der to su­per­im­pose the grem­lins in the cho­sen movies.

WHO AM I ?

Sacha Fein­er -​ I am a movie and an­i­mat­ed movie di­rec­tor, spe­cial ef­fects cre­ator and sculp­tor, in Brus­sels.
I made sev­er­al short films, doc­u­men­taries, and car­toons; I al­so work as a graphist.
In 2007 and 2008, I made an an­i­mat­ed se­ries and re­cut trail­ers that were played at the BRUS­SELS IN­TER­NA­TION­AL FAN­TAS­TIC FILM FES­TI­VAL (largest genre fes­ti­val in Eu­rope), be­fore each screen­ing.

WHY THIS PRO­JECT?

I have been a grem­lins fan since I saw the first movie as a kid and it has al­ways been my dream to be part of such a pro­ject. I own one of the largest Grem­lins col­lec­tions in the world; tons of mer­chan­dis­ing prod­ucts and sev­er­al orig­i­nal screen-​used props. I am tru­ly pas­sion­at­ed with these crea­tures (and their movies), as well as with spe­cial ef­fects. I am lucky enough to be able to af­ford the whole mak­ing of some­thing like this, en­tire­ly writ­ten, pro­duced and di­rect­ed by me.

HOW LONG AND HOW MUCH?

The whole pro­duc­tion was two months long. It has been fin­ished on 15th ju­ly, 2008.
This is a fan, non prof­it pro­ject. I did ev­ery­thing alone, from the film­ing to the com­posit­ing. I on­ly had as­sis­tants for the pup­peteer­ing. The over­all bud­get, in­clud­ing the pur­chas­ing of the orig­i­nal sculp­ture, the HD and stu­dio equip­ment, the mold­ing and paint­ing of the pup­pets and the edit­ing, was about US $3000. This is al­so an an­swer to some­thing Joe Dante said in an in­ter­view, when the jour­nal­ist asked why they did not shoot any new al­ter­nate se­quence for the DVD edi­tion: "I guess there was no bud­get"! In­deed, the pur­pose is al­so to show that it is pos­si­ble to ren­der a pro­fes­sion­al, en­ter­tain­ing and well done se­quence for... near­ly noth­ing.