Week 29th Sept - 3rd Oct

On Monday we finished doing the close up shots for Glenn and Alpha. This is quite a funny part of the film as it will cut between Glenn sweating and breathing fast, about to throw up and the embryo in the man-womb. Each cut back to Glenn he will have more and more sweat on his face, until he eventually looks like he has just had a shower! I used glycerine for the sweat as it sits on the silicone better than water would and lasts longer. I'm not the biggest fan of using glycerine because it is so sticky and is a pain to clean off everything, and I have to be careful not to get it on the costumes. However, it is a very good effect and worth the effort. I was puppeteering Glenns arms, it was quite difficult because Will was controlling Glenn's head and body, and we both needed to stand in the exact same spot! Managed to solve this by repositioning how the rods sit in Glenns hands, so that I could puppeteer from the side. 

Painting on glycerine sweat

Tuesday we started on the shots from inside the cubicle. The back wall of the cubicle was removed so that the camera could look through. This quickly became a problem when we realised that you could see the reflection of the camera in the shiny red surface of the cubicle door! To fix this, Steve used a sheet of depron around the lens and then used a black sheet to cover himself while filming. This is a material that reflects light and is used quite a lot in cinematography for this purpose. It is also used architectural model making and various other crafts. 

This shows the depron around the camera

I took off Alpha's costume and detached the legs from the body. I then put rods in them from the top of the thigh, and put the trousers and shoes back on. I could now puppeteer these legs as if they were being dragged into the second cubicle to Glenns right. It worked really well and I think the shot will really look good! 

This scene is just after Glenn has thrown up Manny, and he bursts the door off the hinges and drags Alpha into the next cubicle to flush his head in the toilet. I applied glycerine to the cubicle door as Manny would have just come from the toilet and would be wet! 

Back view showing both cubicles, one with Glenn cowering in the corner and the other with Alpha's legs, ready for me to puppeteer! 

After we got this shot I quickly reattached Alpha's legs to his body. While I did this, the art director Katie put the back wall into the second cubicle and put the toilet in. With Katies help, we rigged Manny and Alpha into place in the cubicle. To make the puppets actually puppeteer-able we had to remove one of the floor panels, this also made room for the camera and tripod to fit in. Alpha's head was not visible so I didn't bother putting one on as it gave a bit of extra room in the cramped cubicle. I puppeteered Glenn with Katie, moving him from the corner of his own cubicle to then look into the next cubicle and glimpse Manny for the first time. 

We then did the shot where Manny runs out of the cubicle. On Wednesday we finished that shot and moved on to the shot where Manny opens the main door and beckons Glenn to follow him. This took a lot longer to set up than planned. The floor wasn't removable where Manny needed to be so I had to use a hole saw to cut a path for Manny's rod to fit through. 

Once this was done we were able to get the shot, although it took far too many takes to get it because of what an awkward position the rod needed to be in to get the beckoning looking right. For this shot, I started by just opening and closing the door from behind, but then ended up swapping with Will, who was having a hard time with the beckoning movement. We got it in the end! 

You can see me in the doorway peeking out, trying to see the monitor to look at the last take we did.

After this shot, we speedily moved on to getting Manny poking his hand up to open the toilet lid. I had already detached his arms and put a rod up one of them. I had to cut a bigger hold in the bottom of the toilet so that his arm would fit through properly, I did this with a stanley knife. Before each shot I had to recover the arm with glycerine to act as toilet water.

A polite greeting from Manny, shown on the monitor. 

Unfortunately because the setup took so long on Wednesday, we had to get the last shot on Thursday. This on required Simon and I though so it wasn't a problem luckily. The shot that we got on Thursday was an interesting one, it was of Glenn looking down into the toilet bowl and shutting the lid. But the camera was looking from Manny's point of view so we needed to shoot through water. To do this we used several magic arms to secure a pyrex dish in place, filled with a little water. Simon cut out the shape of a toilet seat and lid and attached to the rim of the dish. The camera was underneath the dish facing upwards. It only took about twenty minutes to get the shot, and it looks fantastic! I puppeteered Glenn and Simon did the lid closing and poured a small stream of water in the dish to disturb it a bit. 

For the rest of the day I worked on ticking off everything on the to do list! I removed Glenns coat and put his new shirt on, ready for the dancing on Friday. I put Manny's new arms on and reattached his legs so that they stopped moving out of position. I then cleaned off any glycerine on the puppets and tidied up the wigs. After lunch I got to work on making a new central neck mechanism. I had been discussing new ways to do this with Simon over lunch times and we came up with several ways that we could make it work using nylon rod rather than aluminium plates. 

This is the old mechanism. The main problem is the photo above, this happens with too much use or a really extreme movement of the neck. The central spring is actually curtain wire, with the case stripped off. It is a really good material and is used a lot in animatronics but once it has been bent too far, it wont go back to its original position and needs to be replaces. To repair it is an intensely fiddly job that I am not very good at doing. Emily, who made this mechanism could do it in about half an hour but it sometimes takes me longer, which is really bad for the schedule. This problem happens quite a lot, and the mechanisms lose tension really fast too. 

These are some sketches that Simon did while we were discussing possible ways to redesign the mechanism after Emily left. Thursday afternoon I took these images and was given free reign over what I did using the nylon rod and curtain wire... as long as it worked better! 

As I'm not allowed to use the band saw or any other machinery for insurance, one of the engineers kindly cut some 10mm thick disks and 30mm disks for me. I then found the centre of each and marked 4 spots on the 10mm and 30mm disks.

On the 10mm disk, I drilled holes about half way through on two opposite holes and then on the other two spots, I drilled all the way through. I also drilled a hole in the centre.  I did the same with the 30mm disk, but no central hole. I then used araldite to glue two lengths of curtain wire into the half way holes in the 30mm disk. 

 Once this was dry I glued the other ends into the 10mm disk half way holes. 

Once dry, I put the disk into a vice and drilled two small pilot holes for bolts into the top. These bolts were to wrap the wire around to keep the tension stronger. 

This is the finished rod, I hadn't tensioned it at this point but the central brass rod runs through the body of the puppet, with the lower clamp stopping it at a certain length. The wire threads through from the top of the disk, through both sides of the 10mm disk and into opposite sides of the brass rod, which then runs down to the lower section where it is tensioned onto the handle. I was so pleased that it worked! It's a much simpler mechanism and is much faster to repair if broken. I found that using two lengths of curtain wire stops the mechanism wanting to bend too far, making it unusable. 

I put this rod into Glenn ready for Fridays dance scene, and started making more for the other puppets, but concentrating on getting one for Manny first, as he needed a new one for Friday too. 

On Friday there was very little set up to be done regarding the set, but Steve had a big job on lighting because he needed to create the atmosphere of a night club. He used a black backdrop and haze, as well as a lot of lighting. We had all of the puppeteers in, some of whom had to move lights around rather than control puppets. We spent the day trying out a lot of different dance moves, and swapping who was controlling which puppet or light to get some variations in shots. Simon was keen to get as much footage as possible so there was a lot to choose from in the edit. 

I found a new confidence in my abilities to fix things this week, and I'm really pleased that there is a new mechanism for the puppets, things should start to run a lot smoother now. Next week we will continue the montage scene, starting on Tuesday with the shot outside of the night club. 

Controlling Lights!