The Making of Robin Hood is Alive

Hello everyone! Jonathan of Paperclip Films here to give you a behind the scenes look at the making of this week’s video Robin Hood is Alive!




For this video we filmed exclusively with the Canon T2i. Its low light capabilities and small size made it an obvious choice for a video shot at night in a public setting.

Filming of this video took place in a shopping center located between Gary and Grant’s house and mine. You may have noticed it is the same location used in an earlier video. Gary was back for Thanksgiving break and we all wanted to make a movie together. Also on break was our good friend, Peter Kaplan, who played the hooded figure in the video.

Gary, Grant, Peter and I met at 7:30 pm, with no particular idea in mind. We brainstormed for a time (okay… we joked around for a time) at McDonalds. Gary and Grant eventually came up with a vague outline for a video featuring a modern Robin Hood. The original outline called for Robin Hood to steal chocolate coins and then distribute them to random people in the shopping center after escaping a hooded figure. After distributing the candy coins, Robin Hood and Little John would escape in a getaway car driven by yours truly. As always, time constraints and circumstances led to drastic modification of this idea.

We began by shooting the opening scene and the grocery store scene. This went as planned. (Okay… we did have some trouble locating the chocolate coins). After Gary and Grant stuffed the coins in their shirts, they removed them, we paid for them, and I filmed them leaving the store.

After the chase scene, we decided it would be too much of a hassle to accost random people to accept candy from the Merry Men (I mean, that's not sketchy in the least).  With one of the main points of our plot gone, we began brainstorming again. Gary had it! We would show Robin Hood and little John stuffing the chocolate coins into “Get Rich Quick” books at Borders. We walked to Borders with renewed vigor, only to discover that it had closed (it was 10:00pm at this point).

Now what? Maybe K-Mart would have books. We trekked there with hope in our bosoms. Books they had, but most of them were of the best selling romance variety… not much of a help. What to do!? Time was running out (K-Mart closed at 11:00pm). We ended up filming Robin Hood and Little John dumping the half eaten candy into my arms.

We returned to where the video had begun. What you see in the video was made up on the spot, more or less. Gary’s awkward back-flip entry was unintentional. He bruised his face pulling off this epic stunt.

After filming, we discovered that Gary had locked his keys in his car. We all climbed into Peter’s car and made the 40 minute round trip to retrieve them. We parted ways. On my way home I got a ticket for a broken license plate lamp.  All things considered, it was worth it.

Check back next week for a behind the scenes look at our next video!