Page 77 - Film Facilities & Studios Almanac_ok

T A
THE DP VIEW
DAVE ALEX RIDDETT
he effects house we used, MPC, have done a great job in marrying real elements with our world. But we also had a few attempts at producing
animatable fog by projecting onto gauzes.
In fact one of the shots does have a remnant of an early test in there. It’s actually a diffused, dispersed random cloud shape projected through a gobo on to a gauze screen that had been patched over with bits of black paint.
We could computer control it so that we could move the fog slowly across the screen, putting it through another gobo puts a slight ripple to it. That was a distant fog effect we could actually do frame by frame.” ■
TRISTAN OLIVER
big part of our job is making these characters work in their own environment.
The sort of plasticine they’re made from is particularly
unforgiving. It has a very pale matt finish so light doesn’t wrap round it like it would with a human face, or even with a silicone head.
You have to learn how to illumi- nate that rather unforgiving material as well as possible. That was a partic- ular problem we faced on Chicken Run where the beaks cast a shadow over the bottom of the face all the time.
So we were always thinking about shadows being dropped over faces. ■
Photo top right: Lead cinematographers Dave Alex Riddett and Tristan Oliver; above l-r: Nick Park and Steve Box; at work on The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Fujifilm Motion Picture • The Magazine • Exposure • 19