Return from round the world trip! Kiev>Moscow>Beirut>Bangkok>Los Angeles>NYC
Sebastopol, Ukraine. A fascinating town on the Black Sea
Seven Sisters, Moscow
Getting a realistic bear suit to Lebanon was no small task. There are only a few decent ones available worldwide, each is custom made with many differences in quality and build. The most realistic suit in my opinion was made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Los Angeles. Because it is made of real bear pelt it requires official documents to travel internationally. It also is custom fit for one stunt guy who lives in the UK and the suit travels in two 100 Kilo steel cases with no less than two wranglers and a separate puppeteer from Henson’s creature shop. All of these requirements made the Henson bear difficult to acquire on our schedule. Luckily Animal Makers in Los Angeles has a great synthetic bear suit that travels in two lightweight cases. My costumer Kimi was able to bring the bear on the flight with her from L.A. Jim Boulden at Animal Makers said, “Unless a they’re worried about a terrorist with a very silly sense of humor, you should be fine.”
We held a local audition and found a great mime to play the bear. I had Kimi, the costumer assist with additional pupeteering from behind the bear, twitching the ears and moving the torso a bit. The head is not animatronic, we would add some additional life to the face later, with 2D distortions and eye blinks. This is good because you get more takes, the suit and puppeteers do the heavy lifting of selling the effect, and the digital guys add detail later. I asked the mime to open his eyes wide for this shot because it reminded me of one of my favorite movie posters from one of my favorite films.
The most fun part of my job is finding a funny or believable performance from a living, breathing human being. But often I am asked to get an expressive performance from an inanimate object. On this PSA to fight child obesity for the Saudi market I was asked to make a sunflower to droop sadly on camera. After some testing I became an expert on this infinitesimal and nerdy sub-set of…timelapse cinematography… that of slowly and intentionally killing sunflowers. It requires heaters placed in the right positions and turned off at the right moment. Here’s are some images from our testing:
This kind of filmmaking is fun because its part science project, part filmmaking. In this example the flower drooped too quickly and the petals barely shriveled. Eventually I found that the best method is to put heat lamps near the petals for about 8 minutes (these dry out and curl up the petals) then put heating elements below the plant (these dry the stem and cause it to droop) When you turn off the heat lamps, the flower continues to droop for about 5 more minutes. The whole thing takes about 15 minutes. Then we can remove any offending frames and speed it up to any desirable speed in post. The delicate nuance with which the petals wither is beyond any detail you could get with a CG artist and a simulation. And its not as much fun as figuring out an in-camera technique.
Puppeteering a withered sunflower
Georges brought me delicious Lebanese breakfast each morning
Beirut Lebanon on a rainy day
Location recce, Pattaya
Chinatown, Bangkok. The crews in Thailand are a dream. They work hard, never complain, and you get 40 workers instead of 12. If you have a lot of setups, you can work through lunch. In comparison, Western crews are a bunch of dilettantes, insisting on an hour for lunch like it’s a breezy sunday afternoon. Shooting in Bangkok rocks.
Who in this picture needs suntan lotion? DoP Matthew Woolf goofing with the Thai AD.
