These are strange times when we all have to stay home. No office, no school, no kindergarten.
All right. We’ll set a good example.
#StayHome and stay healthy!
All posts by Tim
Happy Easter!
Time is moving so fast. I feel like just having posted last years’s easter greetings…
However, the easter mice with their temporary bunny ears and I want to wish you happy holidays and some warm sunbeams appropriate for spring time.
Frozen Bodies
Ischgl, Austria, November 27th, 2015. On Location for the Alps Documentation.
Going to Austria was a rather weird trip: the van was full to the brim, and two corpses lying at the very top. Of course, these were Dummies, but I still covered them in some blankets to make it look less macabre. In the hotel, I put them to their temporary rest on the sofa. Scenes from a set-decorator’s life.
Just in the middle of a skiing region, we continue shooting a scene which we started in sunny September. In that scene, a group of celtic merchands passing the alps was taken off-guard by a blizzard (take some handfuls of fake snow and add some VFX). Now, it is time to show what happened to the poor souls that did not make it.
The day before, the two dummies had accompanied us in the ski-lift, climbing up to 2600m. There, we had dressed them with costumes provided by our historical advisors from Kaptorga. The makeup department literally had lent me a hand (and a head, both very realistic silicone props). After having attached these to my two buddies, I had put them into the snow.
The weather was quite nasty. An icy wind was constanty sweeping powdery snow across the plains. Best conditions for really having my two corpses snowed in, covered by a perfect, natural and untouched layer of fresh snow – in a way that I could hardly create artificially.
The plan worked out quite well. When we came back today (this time the weather was marvelous) we hardly found them again. Snowbound…
The camera (and the crew) approached from wide shots to medium shots, keeping the snow in the visual field untouched. For the close-ups, I removed a bit of the snow from the faces.
After we finished shooting, we had to remove our dummies. You should have seen the look on the faces of the skiers…
Best wishes
Felix, Doc, Frau Agnes and the whole staff wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all the Best for 2016!
Squashed Slugs
No animals were harmed in the making of this film.
Protecting animals is taken seriously when making a movie – even concerning what most people would simply consider vermin. In König Laurin squashed slugs were to be shown. Therefore, my job was to create true-to-life (or better true-to-death) slug dummies.
Happy Halloween!
To cut a long story short: decoration for Halloween does really work without any pumpkins. Check it out.
bumm-Event Special Guest: Frau Agnes
Frau Agnes is based on a real-life person. In 2013, that lady already inspired a puppet for the BR show “Sauhund”, but I always felt that she had some further potential to explore. So I created a new character and built a puppet for it: Allow me to introduce Frau Agnes!
During the workshops, she assisted me, serving as a vivid example of her kind. But being an enthusiastic reader of the yellow press in possesion of a VIP tag -I made them and she somehow must have gotten hold of one-, she took some time off and went around the bumm film compound hunting for celebs (from left to right: “Mara” Lilian Prent, Sophia Leonard, Esther Schweins).
Puppet-Workshop – the final day
Oct 26, 2015 @ 09:39
Oof, I won’t lie – I am a bit ‘kaputt’ right now. At the beginning, I was a bit shocked hearing that a lot more workshops were to be held than originally planned. Demand was so high that instead of two workshops (one on Saturday, one on Sunday), we now offered five!
However, Looking back I would not have liked to cancel any of them. The amout of creativity that the particpants showed was really incredible. In 2 days, nearly 40 really expressive puppet characters saw the light of day! Lots of thanks to the participants, and kudos also to bumm film, who offered this workshop during their DVD-release party of “Mara und der Feuerbringer“.
The sunday’s workshop’s puppets – and their mothers and fathers.
Puppet-Workshop – first results
Oh, what a day! Three workshops are over. Of course, two hours are a really tight schedule for teaching eight participants to build sock puppets. Forming them to working characters was the thing which I considered really difficult. Hence, I really, really do appreciate the results. But have a look for yourself…
And once again, many thanks to my participans. I had a great time with you!
Puppet Workshop – update
Preparations for the workshop are running high. Subscriptions as well. Wow! We had to announce some supplementary courses…
Currently, I am preparing the seminar room. I want to exhibit some puppets as examples, and show more of them in a picture gallery (for some samples, see below). Additionally, in one corner of the room, a demo reel video showing the puppets in action. Maybe, I will show a (shortened) version of the reel here in the blog….
