“It’s OK. We’ll fix it in post.”

This is the most evil thing you can utter on a set. If a director says this, the VFX artist who actually has to fix it in post will curse every pebble said director has even tread upon. This condition is worsened when you are actually both of those people. Because, you know the evil of it when you’re saying it, but you know you have to say it. And then when you’re dealing with the consequences of having said it, you know why you had to say it. But that doesn’t change the fact that now, you’re sitting in a chair, staying up a bit later than your day job would like, continuing brick walls and smoothing out wrinkly laminate flooring.

When you’re doing a high-concept film, such as this one, with no money, such as we did, one will inevitably come up against adversity. We built all of our interior sets in a warehouse. We had no money for this, but the Production Designer - Ryan C. Wolfgang - used his resources and ingenuity to build some amazing sets. I mean, we had walls that opened up to reveal a secret passage and a knocked out brick wall. But, we were renting this warehouse for two weeks, and weren’t allowed to paint the floor, or glue anything to it. Luckily, the warehouse next door was a flooring place, and Wolfgang got them to sell us some flooring at a great price, and we had a nice looking floor.

However, then I brought in the rest of the crew to actually shoot on it, and the big Chapman-Leonard dolly, the various rigs for getting the puppet to walk the length of the hallway in a single shot, and all the people running across the floor accelerated its aging process a bit. So, we ended up with shots like this (click for full size):

Which I now have to make look like this (also click for full size):

This isn’t the only shot I’ve been doing this on. However, this was the first one, and I learned a lot doing it. I spent the last year learning tons of tricks with After Effects, but whenever I get comfortable something inevitably comes along to make me realize that I’m still only making surface scratches with this amazing program. It seems each new shot I work on makes me learn a whole new art form. I’m so glad I made this movie!

(That was not sarcastic, by the way.)

I’d mentioned in my Derailed post that we had to shoot another scene, and I wanted to talk about it a little bit. The shoot happened on August 16th, with a small crew, outside the Brevard Museum of History & Natural Science — which is the same museum we shot Dudley in.

In the original script, the film opens with an establishing shot outside “Ye Olde Museum of Modern Art,” and then quickly moves inside to a dark and somewhat creepy scene where Pupsock and Wendell corner Princess Stacie’s kidnapper, Dirk.  If you know the characters, this is a funny scene.  However, since this is the first movie I’ve done with them, you don’t know the characters.  So, while you’re trying to figure out what kind of movie you’re dealing with, the movie is pretending to be something it’s not.

In order to combat this problem, I went ahead and expanded the first scene from a simple establishing shot into a quick little scene with Pupsock arriving at the museum and coordinating the plan of attack with Wendell over walkie-talkies.  It kinda ruined the nice reveal we have of Pupsock in the creepy scene, but it sets the tone for the rest of the movie so well, that it was a worthy sacrifice.

Once we had the scene written, there was still some question as to when we’d actually shoot the thing.  I’d been working on the special effects in my spare time, not sticking to any schedule, other than I was eager to be finished.  When I talked to Jamie Donmoyer, the brilliant puppeteer who served as Pupsock’s main performer (the also-brilliant Amy Strickland filling in for one day) about her schedule, she informed me that she’d be in New York for a while, puppeteering on Disney’s Johnny and the Sprites.  She’d be back and forth between Orlando and NYC, but pretty much the only day she could do it would be August 16th.  Luckily, this was between gigs for producer Tom, so he was able to bring out the Blue Juice Films light kit, and serve as DP.  So, we were on.

This left not a lot of time to plan, not to mention building the “Ye Olde Museum of Modern Art” sign.  So, I sprung into action.  Most of the crew weren’t available on such short notice, so I ended up building the sign myself, and was pretty pleased with the result.  Used a big piece of plywood, with a peg-board-like material covering it.  Jigsawed a curve to the top, and connected it to two fancy fence posts.  I put two-foot squares of plywood on the posts, so they could stand free while supporting the sign, and made the sign detachable for easy transport.  Well, as easily as one can transport a large sign and fence posts.  Which is not very easily.  Lastly, I bought a bunch of letters from various craft stores, spray painted them, and glued them to the sign.

The only crew I had were Tom as DP, Chris Santora - who served as Practical Effects Lead and Assistant Director on the main shoot, and Kevin McGuire - the voice of Pupsock, who both served as “General Shemps,” a.k.a Production Assistants.  I didn’t originally want to bother Kevin about the shoot, because he’d just bought a house and had been busy getting it ready to move into, but no one else could make it, so I decided to give him a call.  It turned out he wanted a break from working on his house, so he came out and was invaluable.  Tom was able to put both Chris and Kevin to work, and only needed me occasionally after I had blocked out the scene with him.  This left me free to work with Jamie, so we could be on the same foot before shooting began.

We were shooting outside at night, and it took longer than expected to get enough light on the museum to be able to see it.  However, once we got rolling, everything was awesome.  A couple of bumps at the start, but we had just enough crew that I was able to sit right next to Jamie, and it didn’t take too much coaching for her to just nail the scene.  It’s so much fun working with her, because she puts so much life into Pupsock, it’s a joy just sitting there and watching it happen.  After the first couple of takes, Tom and I just kept looking at each other with big grins on our faces.  Whatever doubts we had about whether or not this was the right way to open the movie just vanished.  The new opening is gonna be awesome!