Hello Woodsy,
You wanted a story about the model Japanese village I was building for a TVC (television commercial)...
First, the build reminded me of a l situation I was in in the 1980's. There, the builder had had a heart attack in his forties. He rethought his life, bought himself a Harley bike and a leather jacket with the tassels and vowed he was a new man. Then he took on the TVC from Hell, got back into the same old same old, and was dead soon after!
This time, my pal from Superman Returns called me up to say he was building a bunch of miniature set ups and could I help? I was budgeted for 10 days and my work was mostly assembling laser cut carcasses, detailing the surfaces and doing the painting and detailing.
The big rub was, it was being shot in 4K resolution -or maybe 8K...
The lines of communication on this gig were woeful and never improved.
We had to make our own decisions, to stay on schedule then days later, changes would be demanded...
For 4K, my skills amassed over 30 years in the trade would need a massive upgrade. In the old days, I'd squint to get an idea of what would hold up for film resolution.
As I moved into video production, I had to be much subtler. Now, I have to weather objects to the human eye, as if they were museum grade models.
I was working on a series of Japanese houses that had to look used, but not grubby. As such I ended up using the barest smudges, as can be seen below the diamond shaped attic window.
There were also twisty problems, like painting graphics and writing on a corrugated roller door.
I couldn't transfer a tracing onto the bumpy surface, so I had to copy everything by eye onto the tops of the ridges and then paint down onto the valleys! The next time I'll make decals!
Just after I'd finished this, we got a shipment of new acrylic paint brush pens from China.
They were a revelation! I started off drawing graffiti all over the New York set, but quickly found they were better for painting figures than traditional brushes that need to be washed out for each colour change.
I dusted off Superman pre-painted figures for the street dressing. A mark of the changing times, was having to re colour the red trucker caps on some of the figures as they have a different meaning now!
The marker pens were great for hand painting Japanese characters onto 30mm high paper lanterns. I copied the designs from a photo in an eBay listing!
I did everything from turning shiny white Barbie furniture into rococo antiques, to carving two square metres of Japanese paving into foam sheets. Using only a pencil and a lump of rock to bash in the texture, I dry brushed the results for a winning finish!
I don't have any pics of the final set up, as that was beyond my budgeted time. But having been retired for ten years, it was difficult snapping back into 10 hour workdays.
I managed it, but I was exhausted by each day's end. - at least I didn't have two hours travel time each way to Fox Studios, to worry about after all that work!
Having pandered to unrealistic and unworkable demands, from people who wouldn't listen to three veteran's combined 90 years of on-set experience, I'm glad to be out of the game again.
From now on, the only unrealistic and unworkable demands I'll be pandering to, will be my own!
Back to my puppets!
Looey
Oz
