Blade Three Archery Stunt goes far too well

[andrewducker]

Jessica Biel, star of the upcoming vampire sequel film Blade: Trinity, told SCI FI Wire that she got so good shooting a longbow for her role as a vampire hunter that she accidentally shot out a $300,000 camera lens with an arrow in a stunt gone awry. "The archery training was some of the hardest training I did," Biel said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego. "It was muscles that you don't even know you use in your back. You have to be really relaxed and really focused. It was hard. It was really, really difficult."

David Goyer, who wrote and directed Blade: Trinity, told SCI FI Wire that the stunt was designed to offer a camera's-eye view of Biel's shooting an arrow. "We've got this camera aimed at her," he said. "She had learned how to shoot the arrow very well. She was 30 or 40 feet away, but she was also up in the air three stories. And all the crew were behind safety [glass]. The only thing that was uncovered was literally a 2-inch-by-2-inch thing right in front of the lens. We said, 'Aim for the camera!' And BAM! Right down the lens, into the housing and into the camera. Destroyed a $300,000 camera. We caught it on film, and we're going to put it on the DVD."

"Are you?" Biel said. "Oh, God."

More here.

Comments

[trav28.livejournal.com]

I read this story a while ago too - but this version is much more Verbose.

I like Ms Biel, she seems a lot more honest than a lot of New Hollywood.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

There's a version of Murphy's Law coming into play there. The one and only time I ever played squash at school, I managed to send two consecutive balls out through a 4" square ventilation duct just below the ceiling.

I did fencing after that, which was fine until the PE teacher came back to the gym unexpectedly and discovered we'd all the climbing ropes, vaulting horses and wooden partitions out to liven things up a bit -- but that's another story, and it was at least partly Anthony Hope's fault, anyway....

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Ah, they should have gotten Geena Davis. :-).

Yes, I'm just showing off my Geena Davis trivia that just stuck in my mind forever, displacing the ability to remember what the regex expression for decimals, who sang "Ballroom Blitz", my wife's birthday, etc. etc.

Cool story. I'd like to see the DVD copy of that shot.