Kodak - CRUNCHY

Kodak in association with NAHEMI (National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image) is offering the opportunity to make a 30 second commercial from 1 x 400ft roll of 16mm stock for one of four advertising briefs. Kodak will provide the stock free of charge, but the cost of processing needs to come out of the £800 budget provided by the NFTS. It's basically a way of getting experience making a commercial and getting feedback from industry people, hopefully meeting Dougal Wilson who's the biggest commercials director in the UK. 

Simon and Steve (cinematographer for manOman) came up with an idea for one of the briefs and pitched it. They got the funding and we're now set to shoot on the 19th and 20th of January.

I've been asked to make a puppet for the bird. Simon will work on it with me but not entirely because he's still working with Paco on the edit for manOman, as well as the sound designer Dayo James, visual effects Rob Rankin and composer Terence Dunn. 

While also making the embryo I was discussing ideas on how to make the bird a lot with Simon. I made a cardboard prototype to test a mechanism for the flapping wings and beak movement.  We agreed that it would be a very fat bird to keep in line with the sugar consumption theme. It's head needed to move, beak to open and close and wings to flap quite comically. 

Once I knew that would work, I moved on to make the real thing. I started with the beak, making it out of brass tube. The idea is that the top of the beak is static and is permanently attached to the pvc pipe that it will sit in, and the lower beak will be longer and only attached to the top beak with a pin, with another hole at the back for a rod to fit though. The puppeteer can then push the rod up to open the beak and pull down to close it. 

I attached the beak mechanism to the pvc pipe using milliput. I then cut a polystyrene ball in half and hollowing the inside with a dremel. I stuck this around the mechanism with contact adhesive. Simon carved the body out of black high density foam and I made the wing mechanism in the same way as I did with the card prototype but with aluminium instead. Before attaching the body around the wings, I felted the body with a base colour using the needle felting technique. I bought needle felting tools and did this at home to save on train costs because the budget for CRUNCHY is much, much smaller than the manOman budget. 

This is a video that shows the bird all together and how it works without any felting. 

I'd never needle felted before and I also wasn't going to be doing it the conventional way. I did a little test and it seemed to work really well. All I did was get a piece of felting wool (same stuff I used for manOman wigs) and stab through it and into the foam repeatedly until its bonded together. The tool is barbed at the end which bonds the wool fibres together. 

 After the test I did the same thing straight onto the bird body. 

All three pets were extremely interested in what I was doing and why I was home during the day! 

This is the finished body felted. It needed more detail adding but that would be finishing touches after the wings were attached. 

I made the wings with felt and then needle felted on top of them to give the same texture as the body. 

When I was back in Beaconsfield I put the wing mechanism inside the body and attached it together with contact adhesive. 

Felting the wings onto the body. The wings were made like a pocket to fit the aluminium inside. 

I also felted the polystyrene head. 

This is how the bird currently looks. It needs to have some feathers put on but it is pretty much finished. I still need to make the little chicks and the nest but Simon is going to help me with that because I'm not keen to commit too much of my time before the dissertation hand in! 

Extra Photos

Katie and I waiting in the wagon. This was what we were using to catch the water under the set. Simon told us to "wait there, don't do anything I'll be back in a second with the plastic sheet"... 20 minutes later he arrives back to us both taking a nap in the wagon! In our defence, there actually wasn't anything else that we could have been doing to save time, it was also 8pm. We're not slackers! 

Sitting in on the edit with Paco and Simon. They wanted my opinion on a couple of shots. I quite often spent my lunch breaks in here with them. 

Fixing the snapped rod that happened on the last day of shooting! 

My beautiful, organised puppet table. 

Box of heads! 

This is one of my favourite photos from the whole shoot. Puppeteering under the table! 

My puppet shelf! 

Organising body parts! 

Props and Set Bits

I made some small props over the summer while also puppet making. Before I started on the puppets I helped with the set!

This is the crow bar that Manny uses to smash up the car. It's made with aluminium pole and a lot of filing.. 

I carved the cricket bat that Glenn uses to smash the car with balsa wood. I used electrical tape around the handle and painted it with lineseed oil. 

I used an old cigar case to make a suitcase with. 

This satchel was made with an old leather jacket and wire for the buckles. 

The set I worked on most was the train station. Jen and I did the tracks together and I also painted and textured the bridge/tunnel. 

Spraying the tracks in the spray room 

Making gravel with cat littler! In big buckets we mixed cat litter with grey and black paint to make gravel that would be used to dress the set. To dry it we put it outside on sheets of polystyrene.

I took an old computer to pieces to salvage wires and boxes that could be used on the set. 

Matilda was very helpful in constantly distracting me from work. 

This is before I had added any deer moss and flock to the set. I had painted quite a few layers onto this to give it the depth of an old cracked concrete wall. 

First layer of grey paint. I carved the bricks into the top with a dremel while it was drying. 

before any texturing or painting! It was textured with plaster and sand. 

This was my 'trial' piece of work. It's the ceiling to the train station and I had to make it as a test of my skills to see if I could stay working on the film. Luckily Sara the production designer loved it... and I still haven't left! 

It was made with a large polystyrene sheet and textured with plaster. I then painted on top of it. 

This is what I helped with on my first day (20th of May!!) It's fleshy tunnel that the camera will travel through and into the womb. Made with calico fabric, wire and latex. 

For the shoot it was covered in about 5 tubs of vaseline.