So, WTF is a Slurpasaur? Today with the help of Wikipedia we explain that and nine other strange filmmaking terms. Evey industry and profession has its own slang, but the movie industry seems to be a little more creative in their lingo.

This is a first in a series of articles where we define terminology, techniques, job titles and more. Stay tuned…

“Slurpasaur” is a nickname given to optically enlarged reptiles (and occasionally other animals) that are presented as dinosaurs in motion pictures.

Concurrently with Willis O’Brien and others in making stop-motion animated dinosaurs since the early days of cinema, producers have used optically enlarged lizards, often with horns and fins glued on, to represent dinosaurs, to cut costs, and to present a living analog to dinosaurs, despite huge morphological differences between dinosaurs and reptiles. The first film that used reptiles dressed as dinosaurs was D.W. Griffith‘s Brute Force. Various slurpasaurs appeared in the 1929 film version of The Mysterious Island, the 1933 British film Secret of the Loch, and the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. The first major use of the slurpasaur was in One Million B.C. (1940), which included a pig dressed as a triceratops, with the special effects in this film re-used often, such as in the 1955 movie King Dinosaur.

Other notable films with slurpasaurs include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and The Lost World (1960). The former featured reptiles with attached tall spinal fans, simulating Dimetrodons and looked superficially similar to those creatures, as Dimetrodons have a low slung body structure more reminiscent of lizards than many other dinosauria. The latter is notable for a dinosaur battle wherein a monitor lizard and a young alligator engage in an unsimulated, fierce battle. On the 1960 Lost World, O’Brien, who did the stop-motion dinosaurs for the original, was hired as the effects technician, but was disappointed that producer Irwin Allen opted for live animals.

Fake Shemp

Fake Shemp or simply, “Shemp,” is the term for someone who appears in a film under heavy make-up, filmed from the back, or perhaps only showing an arm or a foot.

The term references the comedy trio The Three Stooges. In 1955, Stooge Shemp Howard died suddenly of a heart attack. At the time, the Stooges still had four shorts left to deliver (Rumpus in the Harem, Hot Stuff, Scheming Schemers, and Commotion on the Ocean), by the terms of their annual contract with Columbia Pictures. By this point in the trio’s career, budget cuts at Columbia had forced them to make heavy use of stock footage from previously completed shorts anyway, so they were able to complete the films without Shemp. New footage was filmed of the other two Stooges (Moe Howard and Larry Fine) and edited together with stock footage. When continuity required that Shemp appear in these new scenes, they used Shemp’s stand-in Joe Palma to be a body double for him, appearing only from behind or with an object obscuring his face. Palma became the original “Fake Shemp,” although the term was not officially in use at the time.

There have been many Fake Shemps over the years, but the most notable ones are Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi, who have “Shemped” frequently throughout their careers. Both have had “Shemp” cameos in nearly all of Raimi’s movies, most notably in the Spider-Man franchise. Campbell is also known to Shemp in many Coen brothers movies. The Coens were involved in the editing process of The Evil Dead.

In Superman II, there is a Fake Shemp standing in for Gene Hackman during scenes director Richard Lester re-shot in order to earn full director’s credit after Richard Donner was fired during production. Hackman refused to come back and re-shoot scenes upon hearing of Donner’s firing.

Most of the scenes in Trail of the Pink Panther that have Inspector Clouseau in them are actually pieces of reused or previously unused footage from previous films in the series with its star, Peter Sellers, who died two years before the film’s release. The last scene uses a body double and was the only shot with Clouseau that was not done by Sellers.

McGuffin

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is “a plot element that catches the viewers’ attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction”. The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.

The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers. Usually, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and then declines in importance as the struggles and motivations of characters play out. It may come back into play at the climax of the story, but sometimes the MacGuffin is actually forgotten by the end of the film.

Multiple MacGuffins are sometimes—somewhat derisively—referred to as plot coupons.

The director and producer Alfred Hitchcock popularized both the term “MacGuffin” and the technique, with his 1935 film The 39 Steps, an early example of the concept. Hitchcock explained the term “MacGuffin” in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University: “[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the ‘MacGuffin’. It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers”.

Honeywagon

A honeywagon is a mobile toilet unit used in the film and television industry. The legend behind the name ‘honeywagon’ is thought to relate to the ‘honey-colored’ liquid that comes out of it when emptying the holding tanks.

Many are the size of a semi trailer. Some honeywagons will be just two large restrooms. Others are a combination of variously sized rooms for specific purposes. These rooms can be private dressing rooms assigned to a single person, larger rooms configured for the wardrobe, or makeup departments, small individual restrooms for the crew to share, and multiple user or individual shower rooms for bathing.

Mull of Kintyre Test

The Mull of Kintyre test was an unofficial guideline said to have been used by the British Board of Film Classification in the United Kingdom to decide whether an image of a man’s penis could be shown.

The BBFC would not permit the general release of a film or video if it depicted a phallus erect to the point that the angle it made from the vertical (the “angle of the dangle”, as it was often known) was larger than that of the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll and Bute, on maps of Scotland.

According to Professor John Hoyles of the University of Hull, the guideline was adopted by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in 1992. Hoyles presented it as “the male performer’s penis must never appear more than slightly tumescent”. The Scottish lawyer Richard Findlay had previously alluded to it in a 1999 interview with Annette McCann. This test was subsequently adopted by UK television broadcasters and by some print publishers.[citation needed]

According to writer Emily Dubberley, the rule hampered the 1990s trend toward feminist pornography; since “you couldn’t show a man in a state of arousal”, the allowed depiction was “hardly a turn-on”, and she criticized it as a double standard that was permitted due to the perception that women did not respond to visual erotic stimuli.

In 2000, a BBFC spokeswoman commenting upon the criteria that the BBFC uses for classification denied that this test existed.

By 2002 the BBFC had largely abandoned its restrictions on the depiction of a tumescent penis. The rule is thought to have first been broken on UK television by a 2003 Channel 4 series entitled Under the Knife with Miss Evans.

Wikipedia: Mull of Kintyre test

Martini Shot

Martini Shot is a Hollywood term that describes the final shot set-up of the day. According to Dave Knox, author of the film industry slang guide Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde, the Martini Shot was so named because “the next shot is out of a glass“, referring to a post-wrap drink.

Other named shots include:

The Abby Singer Shot – The 2nd to last shot (named after an Assistant Director Abby Singer)

The Marislasis – The 3rd to last shot (named for Elian Gonzales‘ aunt)

The Maya Angelou – The 4th to last shot (origin unknown)

The Lou Nidus – The shot before lunch (origin unknown).

Wikipedia: Martini Shot