Sweet. How did the filming work. Ie for the home run did the actor actually hit a home run or did they just use movie magic for that part.
Lots of movie magic. :lol
They did try to actually get some decent hits with the actors first though. They used a pitching machine to get a shot of a home run ball going over the fence.
For shots where "Jackie" had hit to the shortstop, they had a guy with a bat and ball standing behind the plate, and when they called for action, he would hit the ball to the shortstop just out of frame as Jackie started running to first base.
There were only 2 actual plays filmed over the entire day, but there were many takes of different angles, lots of coverage and crowd reaction shots. There were at least 4 different cameras rolling for most of the shots, and they were being moved around all over the place all day long.
The extras had to move around to different sections many times during the day as well.
First Unit and Second Unit were both working at the same time.
There was a steadycam operator on a motorized cart that filmed multiple takes of a tracking shot of Jackie rounding third base heading home.
They also had 2 doubles for the actor playing Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman). Both of whom had previous baseball experience like all the other players on the field.
The outfield wall was covered with plain blue panels. I am guessing that since Rickwood Field is being used as 3 different stadiums in this film, (including itself), that the outfield wall will be digitally added into the shot in post production, since each stadium would have different walls/advertisements.
Also, the upper level seats were filled with thousands of inflatable dummies with masks and wigs, to give the illusion that there were thousands of people in the stands instead of only a few hundred. I'm sure none of that will be visible in the finished film.
A few scenes of dialogue were also shot, but I can't go into details about any of the plot elements. :cool