Set Visit Report: A Nightmare On Elm Street

On Thursday June 25th, I had the opportunity to visit the set of Platinum Dunes' remake/re-imagining of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The film is directed by Samuel Bayer. Many of you might not immediately recognize the name, but Bayer is the man responsible for many of the classic alternative videos from the 1990's (Nivana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Blind Melon's No Rain...etc), and Nightmare is his feature directorial debut. And Academy Award-nominee Jackie Earle Haley takes over as Freddy Krueger.

Throughout the week I'll also be posting interviews we conducted on the set with the producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, director Samuel Bayer, stars Jackie Earle Haley, Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner and even some of the behind the scenes crew, like special effects make-up artist Andrew Clement. Instead of writing up a boring block of text talking about my experience visiting the Chicago set, I've recorded a video blog with Frosty from Collider. You can watch both our preview blog and full set visit video blog, embedded after the jump.

I was on set in their Chicago studio for Day 38 of 46, and they were shooting a sequence late in the film where Nancy believes she's awake, but being awake for 70 hours in a row has her falling into little micronaps. The scene I saw was filmed during one of these micronaps, where her friend Quentin unzips his head in two to reveal Freddy Krueger inside him. It was a special effects heavy sequence, which means that we saw them shoot it from various angles, sizes, using different special effects prosthetics and rigs. You can watch our video blog taling about the set visit below, or even revisit our set visit preview if you want a shorter version of the experience.

Our Shorter Preview Blog:

[flv:http://media2.slashfilm.com/slashfilm/trailers/nightmaresetvisit.flv 400 300]

The Extensive Set Visit Video Blog:

[flv:http://media2.slashfilm.com/slashfilm/trailers/nightmaresetfull.flv 400 300]

Please excuse the choppiness in the video.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is scheduled to hit theaters on April 30th 2010.