to discover and plagiarize the plot. The actors had to read the script behind closed doors, and everyone on set had to wear an ID card. The shoot began with two days at Culver City High School, and the crew spent the next 11 days moving between locations at Northridge and Tujunga. The next 42 days were spent at Laird International Studios in Culver City for the interiors of Elliott's home. The crew shot at a redwood forest near Crescent City in Northern California for the production's last six days. The exterior Halloween scene and the "flying bicycle" chase scenes were filmed in Porter Ranch. Spielberg shot the film in roughly chronological order to achieve convincingly emotional performances from his cast; it was also done to help the child actors with the workload. Spielberg calculated that the film would hit home harder if the children were really saying goodbye to E.T. at the end. In the scene in which Michael first encounters E.T., his appearance caused MacNaughton to jump back and knock down the shelves behind him. The chronological shoot gave the young actors an emotional experience as they bonded with E.T., making the quarantine sequences more moving. Spielberg ensured that the puppeteers were kept away from the set to maintain the illusion of a real alien. For the first time in his career, Spielberg did not storyboard most of the film, in order to facilitate spontaneity in the performances. The film was shot so adults, except for Dee Wallace, are never seen from the waist up in its first half, as a tribute to the cartoons of Tex Avery. According to Spielberg, the scene in which E.T. disguises himself as a stuffed toy in Elliott's closet was suggested by fellow director Robert Zemeckis after he read a draft of the screenplay that Spielberg had sent him. In between takes, the young actors spent time doing activities such as riding bicycles around the sound stages, playing Dungeons & Dragons, the game that Elliott, Michael, Steve, Tyler and Greg play in a scene early in the film, and attending school lessons. The shoot was completed in 61 days, four ahead of schedule. In a 2022 interview, Sean Frye, who played Steve, discussed the visual effect close-up shots for the climax of the "flying bicycle" chase scene: "We were on these rigs ... They're pulling the trees backwards, past us on tracks,