While the movie popularised the term “groundhog day” to describe an event that never seems to change, it also posed some significant filming challenges for the director.
Because the movie revolves around the main character making his way through the same day over and over again, the day needed to appear the sameto the audience every time. This meant that the scenes and props needed to be the same for each subsequent shoot as well as the clothes and extras.
But more seriously, the weather needed to be the same for each day. While this might seem fairly trivial, one must remember that a movie is shot over a number of weeks, a time during which the weather often changes.
To get around this issue, the director had each scene of the movie shot in a number of different types of weather. That way, when it came to the final editing of the movie, he could decided what type of weather the “repeated” day would be shown as in the movie.
Some of the actors in the cast recall shooting the same scene tens of times in weather varying from bright sun to driving rain. Making movies is not all glitz and glamour it would seem.
