Why So Serious?

http://​www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/

You have, as of writ­ing, approx­i­mately 4 hours to get to the co-ordinates on the site — they are intrigu­ingly in San Diego and the page itself is titled “Antic­i­pa­tion”. The clock is tick­ing. Good hunt­ing my friends.

Today we have for you a fan­tas­tic set report from Chicago thanks to our tip­ster “Tony”, where he viewed first hand the action, dam­age and destruc­tion that trav­els along­side The Joker. Warn­ing, Spoil­ers ahead.

So I’m still at work and decided to look down at the street below and can see the crews set­ting things up for tonight. LaSalle is closed head­ing south of Mon­roe because it appears there is a “mock up” heli­copter in front of the Chase build­ing. Looks like it will be a fun night and I might actu­ally get to see some­thing blown up. An all-nighter at work is actu­ally a good thing tonight! My cam­era is ready to go so I will send pic­tures if I can get them.

He con­tin­ues,

Okay, so I went down­stairs and the Joker semi is right out­side my build­ings front door. There was a crew rig­ging stuff up inside the trailer and there was a dummy body lying on the ground. I also noticed they added “teeth” to the front of the truck (think of a cir­cu­lar saw). The Mer­cedes cam­eras were out and the PA said they were going to flip the truck end over end (cab over trailer). Lots of hydro­gen (gas) bot­tles in the back of a truck and Chicago PD every­where, along with fire trucks and ambulances.

And a short while later,

Patience is a virtue. I finally got to see real Bat­man action and it was well worth the wait.

I just wit­nessed the Joker’s semi being flipped over from the back to the front. It drove North on LaSalle and shortly after it crossed Mon­roe it did the flip. I would give it a 10 for nice form and degree of difficulty.

Turns out that the spikes in the front were for the front end to dig into the pave­ment to help it flip. Now the truck is crushed!!

Saw The Joker in full makeup hang­ing around in front of North­ern Trust Bank. He was doing things any vil­lan would do…high-fiving, text mes­sag­ing, smok­ing, and actu­ally look­ing bored.

And here are some pic­tures and the report summary:

So, I work for an invest­ment bank in down­town Chicago and had a great view of today’s film­ing action which was the Joker’s semi being flipped end over end. Heath Ledger was on hand in full makeup but not full wardrobe and there were a TON of peo­ple work­ing on the set. My view was much bet­ter than even Nolan’s and I was able to get this video and pictures.

If you look beneath the truck in the pic­tures you will see a black pis­ton and then “teeth” on the front grill. The pis­ton is what cre­ated the force to send the truck over and the teeth were used to dig into the asphalt to help flip it over.

The pic­ture of the white heli­copter shell is a prop. Appar­ently they blew up a heli­copter last night and did it again tonight. The helo was the start­ing point for the Joker’s semi and was on fire when I left work, after they flipped the truck. As I was walk­ing to the bus I saw just the cab of the Joker’s truck with a bul­let hole filled wind­shield but it was attached to a tow truck rigged w/ lights and pos­si­ble cameras.

MyFox Chicago were also on the scene and they have some higher qual­ity but ground floor footage of the event, which is also worth a watch. Thanks for the heads up Steve, check the video out here.

“I’m a man of my word. I guar­an­tee every­one here is going to die tonight.”

So says Hol­ly­wood Chicago’s descrip­tion of The Dark Knight teaser (via pro­jec­tion­ist Fran­cis Farmer) … which is dif­fer­ent to SuperHeroHype’s pre­vi­ous report. The cause? Hol­ly­wood Chicago claims that there will be two sep­a­rate videos, one for The Simp­sons, another for Comic-Con.

Here is their full trailer description:

It was just the new Bat­man logo for 50 sec­onds with light rays slowly destroy­ing it. There was dia­logue between Bat­man and Alfred.

The last line is: “Some peo­ple just want to watch the world burn.” When the logo gets destroyed, its last piece flies toward the cam­era, turns and has a Joker card on it.

Bruce Wayne says some­thing about “they crossed a line this time”. Alfred says: “They put all their hopes in a man they didn’t understand.”

Joker says some­thing like: “I’m a man of my word. I guar­an­tee every­one here is going to die tonight.”

This is clas­si­fied as a rumor.  Not long left now.

Jeremy Farmer has returned from a Dark Knight prop stor­age locale with these great pic­tures, which he has kindly released under a cre­ative com­mons license. These are some super hi-res shots.

These shots are from his flickr gallery.

Tony came back to tell us this lit­tle bit of juicy gos­sip (beware, spoil­ers ahead):

Was walk­ing around today on Randolph/Washington and saw a brand new, Black Corvette Z06 parked with all of the trail­ers. On the dash­board there was a yel­low sign that said some­thing to the effect of “This car is to be used in film­ing. City of Chicago..blah, blah, blah.” I’ve heard that a new Lam­borgh­ini is sup­posed to be in the film but am curi­ous about the use of the Z06.

I also ran into some “secu­rity guards” when I was check­ing out the Bat­mo­biles and they told me that they filmed a scene the other night where The Joker jumped off of a building!

And today he sent this infor­ma­tion in:

On my way in to work this morn­ing I noticed “No Park­ing signs 7/26–7/30 for Film­ing” all over LaSalle, par­tic­u­larly head­ing South towards the CBOT. Also heard that a very explo­sive scene will be filmed Thurs­day night on Wells & Wacker.

X-Realms have also posted this film­ing report from El Eshoo:

The crew was set­ting up at a place where every­one can look down from the street above and just gawk. Lots of peo­ple in SWAT gear and what looked like Joker hench­men (assum­ing since they were in long black hooded robes and their faces sort of looked in makeup).

In this area were SWAT vehi­cles, Cop SUV’s, the Joker Semi (with bul­let holed wind­shield). A lot of crew peo­ple were wan­der­ing around get­ting ready for tonight’s shoot. Nolan was on hand to chat with crew and actors. Just then, from up the road, Gary Old­man comes run­ning up to the mid­dle where Nolan is stand­ing, stops with a hop, throws his arms out jok­ingly as if to say “Tah-Dah … I’m Here!” It was kinda goofy but funny.

Old­man (com­plete with that cheesy mus­tache) was putting on SWAT gear as well. So, I’m guess­ing he might be involved with the Joker/Semi chase. There was a SWAT Truck rigged with a cam­era in the pas­sen­ger win­dow and the SWAT truck was hitched behind a camera/main truck (where Nolan and com­pany can sit and direct. Just then, the Secu­rity told us to scoot since they were about to film.

I then decided to walk to Mon­roe St (on Upper Wacker, where rumored film­ing was to occur) to see what was up. There were peo­ple with Walkie-talkies about and fig­ured this was the spot. That’s when the rigged SWAT truck and some Gotham Police escort came down the road from the area we were just at. Basi­cally, what they did was did repeat street runs of the SWAT Truck and Police cars dri­ving from Upper Wacker to Lower Wacker via the ramp that heads down there. They did this over and over … noth­ing excit­ing. I guess this is what they meant by the “street level” film­ing that was to occur that night.

I headed back to the River (to view Lower Wacker stuff) to se what was up there. Saw some Tum­blers (2 were uncov­ered) down below but never saw them in action all night. Walked to where I’d seen the Bat­pods nights before. There were 3 of them (2 uncov­ered and 1 cov­ered). Never saw the Bat­pod in action either. In fact, when I returned later, all 3 were cov­ered. I didn’t stay all night so per­haps there were scenes shot in the wee morn­ing hours.

They did shoot some scenes on Lower Wacker with the Joker Semi and the SWAT Truck rid­ing along side (on other side of median) giv­ing chase. There were loud explo­sion sounds as they went by but it was dif­fi­cult to see exactly what they were from since there wasn’t any fire or bright light or smoke or any­thing. Also, pop­ping noises (gun fire) were heard, too.

Later on, they just made passes on Lower Wacker with only the SWAT Truck and some GPD cars. Noth­ing too crazy. For most of the night, I played good Samar­i­tan to peo­ple by telling them where to gawk at the Bat­mo­bile. I’m nice like that.

Be sure to check out the new can­did shots from Bat­man on Film and Hol­ly­wood Chicago

Super­Hero­Hype got the scoop again (via ‘BDE’) with this one, a report of what we shall be see­ing in the upcom­ing offi­cial video release — how accu­rate this is we’ll have to wait and see:

I have seen The Dark Knight Teaser. I don’t want to reveal everything…

It starts out with the WB logo grac­ing the screen, fol­lowed by the DC logo and the Leg­endary pic­tures logo. The screen goes black.

It opens back up as a com­mer­cial paid for by the friends of Har­vey Dent. We are shown shots of him talk­ing, mak­ing pub­lic speeches, and walk­ing in a suit, while a deep voice comes on and talks about Har­vey Dent. A generic politi­cian commercial.

What seems to be halfway through the com­mer­cial, it is inter­rupted by sta­tic, and blacks out. Out of nowhere a crys­tal clear image comes onto the screen of a blacked out man with large win­dows behind him. The cam­era slowly zooms in on him. He’s talk­ing (about what I won’t say) and as he fin­ishes he begins laugh­ing. Light­ning strikes, light­ing up his face, as the laugh­ter grows more manic. Cut to black.

The Bat­man Begins (now The Dark Knight’s bat) emblem is shown with the words The Dark Knight. Then it says Sum­mer 2008 and has the web­site at the bottom.

What is said… is a sur­prise that I must keep for now. It gave me chills.

We have all, by now, seen Neill Blomkamp’s brief E3 trailer which had been made in part­ner­ship with Weta Work­shop. Now we can reveal the full life size replica, fully func­tional Warthog that Weta cre­ated for Blomkamp to use in his shorts. This is a thing of beauty.

Click for full size image

Via Bungie​.net