pulled this from:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1645370/other-guys-five-secrets-revealed.jhtml
(first hit on google when i searched "the other guys bar scene how did they shoot")
How They Pulled Off the Motion-Capture Bar Scene
The film's most visually stunning scene is one that even James Cameron might applaud. It's a freeze-frame, continuous-shot bar scene in which Ferrell and Wahlberg are caught mid-action in a series of drunken incidents. The scene honestly defies easy explanation, which is why we waited until now to reveal how McKay captured it.
"My DP, Oliver Wood, and I had seen this Phillips short film with cops fighting clowns," he explained. "We loved it, but I think that cost $4 million to shoot. At first we were going to do digital camera stills, and I just thought that was boring and we kind of did that already on 'Talladega Nights.' Then Oliver said, 'I think we can do the Phillips thing,' and in four days we came up with the plan.
"We got this motion-capture camera that you program so the camera moves exactly the same every time," he added. "It was similar to what they did in 'The Matrix' with the flying bullets. They weren't wearing motion-capture suits. I wish I had thought of that. I would have made Will wear one for no reason. We just wrote joke scenarios of a night gone horribly wrong. We went to this bar on the Upper West Side [of Manhattan] and shot it in half a day. We cast stuntmen and women who could hold poses. Our special effects company, Evil Eye, added all these funny elements."
