The first two weeks of production were spent shooting exterior scenes, including the canoeing-down-a-snow-covered-mountain sequence, which was shot at night on the hilltop locations of Mountain Dell/East Canyon and the popular ski resort Snowbasin. Braving temperatures that dipped well below freezing, the production filmed the difficult and dangerous scene, which proved to be a great bonding experience for the cast and crew.

Working on six inches of fresh powder, special effects coordinator David Waine and stunt coordinator Peewee Piemonte made sure the actors and stunt people were safe even as they pushed the envelope to give Feig the effect of speed that he envisioned.

“The canoe scene needed to look realistic. If these kids are plowing down a snow bank, they needed to feel like they’re going fast and out of control,” asserts Feig. “For this, David rigged up a big winch to the front of the canoe and just whipped that thing down the mountain.”

Using professional stuntmen and women for the dangerous elements of this downhill chase, Piemonte orchestrated almost a dozen of his best stunt crew to make the action look authentic and exciting.

Piemonte states, “I told my stunt people upfront, ‘Here’s the deal. You’re going to be hitting the ground and hitting the snow. We’re going to be doing good, old-fashioned stunts.’ After all, these guys were sliding down the side of a frozen mountain at night and hitting jumps in a canoe, a kayak, a surf board, a tire and a grill top. They split a suitcase in half with one tree and ruptured an air mattress with another. We needed to make sure it looked real and that no one got hurt. I think all my guys did a great job.”

For shots with the cast in the canoe, cameras were rigged to the canoe from various perspectives to capture every candid moment.

“We go down. We’re moving at accelerated speed. Everybody else is just screaming and all that, but I was in the front of the canoe. We hit a pocket of snow, and a snowball formed in the air. It was nice and round and hit me square in the face,” laughs Tyler James Williams.

“They pulled us down the mountain really fast, and we were all screaming and cracking up. We couldn’t keep straight faces,” Quinn Shephard recalls. “It was really, really fun, but it was cold. One night, it actually got down to six degrees!”

Another chase sequence that kept the special effects and stunt departments busy involved the “borrowed” golf cart. In the film, the cart, driven by the unlicensed UM Donna, careens through the airport terminal and bulldozes over a few retail store displays.

Shephard admits, “When I first read the script I was like, ‘This is crazy. How are they gonna do it? How are we gonna wreak all this havoc and not have the set come crashing down?’”

Waine explains that the golf cart was actually equipped with radio controls that were guided by his team. “We put linear actuators onto the golf buggy for both the brake and the accelerator, and another one to the steering. We then used servo circuit boards and a remote control system that enabled us to drive it from off-set.”

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