Do the kids get to see the movie or what?
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It’s not just horror movies. Any production with children has to protect them from what can be a very stressful working environment with dark subject matter.
The first safeguard is the children’s chaperones, whom are there to make sure the child’s boundaries are respected and the children aren’t suffering. That’s their whole job on the set.
Second is the crew understanding they are working with children and arranging things to minimize the stress. The most basic functions of this are legal, limiting the number of hours you can keep a child on set and what they can do. A good director will also arrange the children’s scenes so they aren’t unduly stressful. Kubric could be a monster but famously Danny Lloyd (Danny from The Shining) wasn’t aware they were making a horror movie.
Third is the cast. They can be really helpful with keeping things from being scary for their children costars, but it’s a lot to ask of someone that is working and are unlikely to be there every scene. The Wizard of Oz set kind of sucked for Judy Garland, with the nicest member of the cast being Margret Hamilton.
These safeguards don’t always work, and it’s important to keep underage performers as protected as possible. They should always have a chaperone at all times, and anything they say should be taken very seriously.
Often editing and special effects are used to make it look like a child is involved in something that they aren’t. For example, if there is a scene in which an adult swears at a child, they might film the adult swearing at an empty room and then the child looking shocked. You’ll often notice that the editing can get a bit weird when kids are on screen.
But as others have mentioned, outright child abuse in the entertainment industry is not exactly unheard of.
Bess Wohl just talked about this at TIFF last Saturday. One of the rules about working with babies is that they have to work within a *fifteen-second* (not minute!) window when shooting emotionally charged scenes. And, of course, TV and movie sets employ twins in order to comply with child actor labour laws.
Not a horror movie but in Game of Thrones, the actress who played Lady Lyanna Mormont said that she was only given the parts of script that involved her character and also she wasn’t allowed to watch the series in full, she was shown some snippets to get a general idea.
I would imagine they employ similar methods in horror movies too in order to protect the child actors.
Imagine being a child actor that becomes a massive star because of being in a horror film that is hugely popular, but you arent old enough to watch it!
There are lots of factors in that:
* The raw footage of a horror movie is pretty bland. Without the music, the editing, and the sound effects it’s almost comical, actually.
* While we see kids alone on the movie, there will be about 10-30 people behind the cameras when they film the scene. Most times, this includes the kid’s parents.
* For the jump scares, they usually film the kid’s reaction without any monster/villain actually jumping on them. At most, it will be a blob-formed puppet or a person in full green suit.
* Today, lots of things are also green screen.
All that said, it’s different today than what it was in the past. There were some real trauma to child actors – and not only in horror movies.
It’s the same with sex scenes. In the old days, they would tell the actors to undress and “act sexy” while the whole crew was watching. Today, they tend to not let anything to chance, each movement is rehearsed with intimacy coordinators and only absolutely necessary crew is in place.
Fuck you mean avoid traumatizing them it’s kind of their plan get the kids so fucked up they need therapy or drugs early on and then keep them on drugs so they are malleable in their teen years and you have plenty of blackmail fodder for their profit years of 18-40
I think I hear Steven Spielberg film ET in chronological order rather that convenient order (eg all the scenes on one set one after the other regardless of where they are in the movie) so the child actors could understand the story and that it was ok in the end
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Sometimes they can’t. There’s a 1992 film called Bram Stoker’s Dracula where Dracula’s victim (Lucy) carries a baby into her tomb. In that scene, Lucy, now a vampire, is covered in white makeup and holding a crying baby.
Apparently the baby was crying due to how traumatizing Lucy looked like and the actress during filming was trying her best to soothe the child to bo avail. The director loved it and kept the scene.
I don’t know about you. But if I saw Lucy like that as a child, I would also cry.
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