I hadn't checked in with studio tradesperson Peggy Archer's blog in awhile. Today at Totally Unauthorized, she reports pseudonymously from a shooting set.

One of our pivotal scenes yesterday involved an actor using a bottle of wine to smash a watermelon (don’t ask).

It looked so good in the script - guy takes savage swing at melon with bottle of vino, melon goes splat, crowd goes wild (maybe), some point is proved.

Except that what really happens when you hit a full-sized watermelon with a bottle of wine is… nothing. No splat, no spray of goo, no satisfying dull ‘thock’ noise. If you really put your weight into it, you might dent the thing if you’ve been working out a lot lately.

This, of course, does not play well on film (although an actor smashing futilely at an uncooperative hunk of produce, ultimately bursting into tears of frustration and having no one care would be a fitting metaphor for so much of life), so the solution was to squib the watermelons so they’d make a Gallagher-esque splat when the actor hit them.

Much trial and error ensues. Archer also contributes to Abandoned Couches.