The filmmakers were thrilled to work with the stars, whom they call "dream casting." Schaffer expounds, "Vinnie Jones was the one person we all had in our heads when we wrote the part of Mad Maynard, the head soccer hooligan. When we found out he was actually going to do it, we were over the moon. When he showed up, he was so much better than we could have ever imagined. And we all agreed that Lucy Lawless was simply the coolest human being we’d ever met."
"Eurotrip" was filmed entirely on location in Prague in the Czech Republic. Mandel says, "Prague is a beautiful city. Just the fact that we were able to double Prague for so many cities was amazing."
Berg notes, "The irony is that one city that Prague did not serve as in our shoot was Prague. But it was London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Vatican City, Bratislava and even Hudson, Ohio."
Despite shooting in and around one city, the production schedule felt more like a trek across Europe to the cast and crew. "We were traveling every day," Schaffer remarks. "It was the wildest thing; we were never in the same place twice. The fact that we were able to accomplish so much in one city is a tribute to our entire production team, especially our extraordinary director of photography, David Eggby, and our production designer, Allan Starski, who is unbelievable."
Several of Starski’s sets were so convincing that they fooled a number of locals, as well as visiting tourists. His Paris Metro station was decked out with authentic signs and posters and looked so real that passersby tried to use it and were surprised to learn "they couldn’t get there from here."
Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Blank was responsible for completing the transformation of Prague into the many different locales needed for the film. Through the use of CGI, Blank was able to add such familiar sites as the Eiffel Tower, the Coliseum and Big Ben into the backgrounds of their respective cities.
The filmmakers emphasize that this "Eurotrip" is not your parents’ European vacation. "The main thing we tried to do is make sure that our group does things that 18 or 19 year olds would want to do," Schaffer offers. "They are not doing things they would do with their parents—that their parents would drag them to. They are on their own, so it’s them having fun in ways that kids would have fun."
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