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SCRAPBOOK was almost entirely unscripted. The actors ad-libbed scenes from general plot points
created by Tommy Biondo and developed with Eric Stanze. Some continuous single takes went on
for half an hour as the actors improvised dialog and as their director pushed them into various layers
of the scene.
Though Tommy Biondo provided the general plot points of SCRAPBOOK, he did not provide the
details of the final climactic scene. Director Eric Stanze asked actor Emily Haack how she thought
her character would finish the story. Stanze and Haack developed the events of the final scene, but
did not provide these details to Biondo, who would perform "blind" opposite Haack for the movie's
climax. He would have to rely on following the lead of his co-star and his director as the scene played
out. Biondo learned how the movie would end as he experienced the final scene while the camera rolled.
For SCRAPBOOK, actors Emily Haack, playing Clara, and Tommy Biondo, playing Leonard, insisted
that the unsettling events of the movie be presented with as much realism as possible. The torture
and rape struggle sequences were played with nothing held back by the actors, resulting in a battered
and bruised Haack and Biondo at the end of each day's shooting. Also in the spirit of realism: The sets
included real rotting food so that the actors would be affected by the smell of their environment. The
dead, decomposed cow in the movie is a real dead, decomposed cow. Scenes depicting sexual
interaction were shot with no censoring or minimizing of the nudity or the sexual acts. With the exception
of vaginal insertion, all sexual interaction was actually performed by the actors. And, the shot of Tommy
Biondo urinating on a sobbing Emily Haack was not faked.
SCRAPBOOK is based on actual events, researched by Tommy Biondo over a five year period.
SCRAPBOOK was shot in only 13 days.
The film Stanze directed before SCRAPBOOK was ICE FROM THE SUN, the most logistically complicated
movie ever made at its budget level... and a towering epic compared to SCRAPBOOK. After
ICE FROM THE SUN completed post-production, Wicked Pixel Cinema decided to try a new challenge
by tackling a movie that existed at the opposite extreme. SCRAPBOOK would have very different
production logistics, different budgetary concerns, a different type of story, and a drastically different
visual style. ICE FROM THE SUN had the biggest budget Stanze had ever worked with up to that point.
The production budget of SCRAPBOOK was the lowest Stanze had worked with up to that point. Requiring
54 days of shooting, ICE FROM THE SUN was Stanze's longest shooting schedule ever up to that point.
SCRAPBOOK was Stanze's shortest shooting schedule up to that point. ICE FROM THE SUN was shot
on 74 different sets. SCRAPBOOK was shot on 5 sets. ICE FROM THE SUN had a cast of over 60 actors.
SCRAPBOOK's cast contained 6 actors. ICE FROM THE SUN had a crew of about 30 people.
SCRAPBOOK had a crew of only 15 people.
The actual book that provides the title of the movie was created by almost everyone involved in the movie.
In the story, the scrapbook contains trophies and writings from all of Leonard's victims. To put realistic
variety into the prop, Tommy Biondo handed the initially empty scrapbook to everyone on the staff of the
production, including the director. Biondo gave everyone a character and instructed them to write in the
book, in that character, as if they were being held captive and tortured by Leonard. Everyone wrote their
unique stories in the pages and contributed their selected photos and other scraps, resulting in a very
realistic prop that truly looks like it was created by a wide variety of victims.
As executive producer, story writer, production designer, and actor in SCRAPBOOK, Tommy Biondo
had more to do with the final movie than any other feature he had worked on. SCRAPBOOK had been
Biondo's pet project for over five years. When director Eric Stanze agreed to make it the next Wicked
Pixel Cinema project, Biondo not only worked pre-production and production for months, but then had to
wait an entire year for SCRAPBOOK to enter its four-week post-production process. Sadly, 26 year
old Tommy Biondo died from injuries sustained while on a shoot in Minnesota only days after
SCRAPBOOK completed post-production. He never saw the finished movie.
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