15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About The Movie “Elf”

11. Deleted Scenes

Favreau deleted one major aspect of the original 1993 story when he created the film. In the early version, Buddy was bullied which is why he traveled to New York City to find his father. Favreau pushed to exclude this from the story because he didn’t like the idea of having North Pole characters be mean. He wanted them to be represented as warm. Plus it better explained why Buddy was so nice to all the people in New York who was so mean to him. Favreau also deleted a scene on a frozen hockey pond with the elves. What starts out as a friendly game turns violent once Buddy hits the ice. They actually shot the scene but it never made the final cut.

12. Snowball Fight Scene

Of course, there are a few times in the film when CGI had to be used like when the snowflakes drift down over the credits and in the classic snowball fight scene. The snowballs were added in during post-production, so when they filmed there wasn’t actually any snow around. This might explain why Buddy had such great aim!

13. Will Ferrell was Once a Mall Santa

In an interview with Spliced Wire, Ferrell revealed he had some experience to draw on while making this movie, but not as an elf! When he was in the sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings with fellow Saturday Night Live pal Chris Kattan, they two worked at an outdoor mall in Pasadena for five weeks. Ferrell was Santa and Kattan was his elf! Ferrell said: “It was hilarious because little kids could care less about the elf. They just come right to Santa Claus. So by the second weekend, Kattan had dropped the whole affection he was doing and was like (Ferrell makes a face of bitter boredom), ‘Santa’s over there, kid.’”

14. Old Fashioned Filming Techniques

Director Jon Favreau was the one who made the decision to give the movie an “old-fashioned” kind of feel by harnessing Christmas classics from the past. One of the ways that he did this was to film with as little CGI and special effects as possible. He used stop-motion animations and forced perspective instead to make Buddy seem much larger than the other elves. Also, the scenes that took place in the North Pole were filmed on two separate sets — a larger scale one for the elves, and another for Buddy and Santa to make them look bigger. In order to make these elements invisible to the untrained eye, they used overlay in camera and lighting to blend it all together.

15. Jim Carrey Was Originally Considered for the Role

The original script for Elf was created by David Berenbaum way back in 1993. At this time, Jim Carrey was at the forefront of the project, but it was during his pre-Ace Ventura: Pet Detective days and it subsequently took a decade to get the film in motion. By the time the wheels were rolling, Will Ferrell had stepped into the forefront of comedy after his gig on Saturday Night Live, so he was signed as the star. There are no hard feelings though because Carrey went on to star in his own two Christmas movies! He starred in the live-action How The Grinch Stole Christmas and A Christmas Carol.

Credits: fame10.com

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