The Making of Thomas Dolby’s The Toadlickers – Part 2

With our first shoot complete, the next step was to get the relevant footage to (evil) puppet master Mike Quinn, in The States. Mike is one of the best in the biz, having worked on everything from The Muppets to the Star Wars series (in which he played Nien Nunb) and thanks to his enthusiasm, passion and commitment, what had started off life as an idea for a horse singing ‘do-si-do’, had quickly snowballed into a mini puppet epic.

The original plan was to FTP it to the (evil) puppet server in Mike’s (evil) puppet empire…until it became apparent that this would take three days…per clip… so instead, we resorted to sending optical media by post…well it was that or use The Force…which given Mike’s connections, was clearly more plausible than using AOL…

Although Mike makes puppets, to have created a full set of barnyard animals from scratch would have involved far too much time and money, so he suggested that we use existing puppets from a company called Folkmanis, which he could adapt as needed. Folkmanis were absolutely fantastic! They are used to working with US network television shows such as ‘The Late Late Show‘ and when I told them about the project, not only did they give us permission to use/adapt their puppets…they asked me for a wish list! Next thing you know, there was a great big box full of puppets on Mike’s doorstep to greet him on his return from ‘Star Wars Celebration V‘, at which he was appearing. He immediately set about customising these, creating costumes, props and sets, lighting, shooting, puppeteering, rotoscoping & comping…the man’s a machine!

I keep hearing that it’s impossible to rotoscope and composite Canon HDSLR files because they are 4:2:0 (which, in plain English means that much of the colour information is thrown away during compression, making it difficult to get clean edges when knocking out backgrounds). Whilst, in theory, you need a minimum of 4:2:2 (which retains much more colour information than 4:2:0) and, in an ideal world, a completely uncompressed 4:4:4, Mike proved that when you really know what you’re doing, Canon 5D files are absolutely fit for purpose, thus shattering yet another HDSLR myth.

Because he was working in Final Cut Pro, which can’t currently handle HDSLR footage natively, Mike had to transcode everything using MPEG Streamclip, resulting in files exponentially larger than the originals, that were waaaay too big to send via the information super dirt track. This meant that his final files would have to be shipped over on a hard drive, which left us with a bit of a dilemma, as I needed to see each clip as it was completed. The solution was for Mike to send me low res versions via YouSendIt, which I could approve and use as proxies in a rough cut.

Mike Quinn with his hand up Millie Hare...or was it Sophia Hareless?
Mike Quinn with his hand up Millie Hare...or was it Sophia Hareless?

Whilst this was happening, I was arranging our final shoot, which required six parkourists and two props. You’d think that obtaining a can of fizzy drink bearing the legend ‘Drink Me’ and a bag of sweets entitled ‘Eat Me’ would be far easier than finding six death defying daredevils whose middle name is ‘danger’. Suprisingly not. The daredevils were readily sourced from Urban Freeflow (the official worldwide Parkour & freerunning network), whereas the drink & sweets took the best part of a week’s research, during which time, a multitude of prop makers said they couldn’t make anything that would look convincing in HD and a multitude of printers said they lacked the expertise and highly specialist printing equipment necessary for the job.

Just as it was starting to look hopeless (and having learnt more about printing that I ever wanted to know), I finally found and spoke to a factory owner in Germany, who confirmed he could meet my exact requirements…with a minimum run of 150,000 pieces…which seemed slightly excessive, given that I only needed one. So, making a mental note that I should look him up if I ever decided to invade Poland with cans of soft drink, I decided to apply Occam’s Razor, popped down to the local pound shop, purchased a bottle of pop and printed a label using Photoshop. Problem solved, as was the dilemma over the ‘eat me’, by using a tippex marker pen to write on the surface of a Jaffa cake. If the low tech SFX approach was good enough for Jack Cardiff (who once breathed on a lens to create a fast dissolve) and the Visual Effects Supervisor of Star Trek The Next Generation (who used glitter swirling in a bowl of water to create the transporter effect), then it’s good enough for me!

Then it was time for the final shoot, which couldn’t have been more different to the first. The melting heat of the Suffolk barn had morphed, like the vision of a scientist full of toad venom, into a chilly London evening, on a South London council estate…or, as Urban Freeflow Head Coach, Chima Akenzua, kept referring to it…’the training facility’.

Our contingent was much smaller this time, comprising just myself, my right hand man Chris Carr, Thomas, his son Graham (a keen Parkourist) and six members of Urban Freeflow, who were busy cutting holes in Prince Charles masks, in the hope that they might actually be able to see something and thus not completely kill themselves whilst leaping over tall buildings in a single bound.

Having decided that the Parkour sequences would be in night vision, we initially decided to shoot with two different cameras, a Canon EOS 5 Mark II, which would give us all the advantages of superb low light performance, interchangeable lenses and full HD, in a relatively small form factor; and a Sony A1, which would give us authentic night vision. However, in post, the 5D footage, with night vision effects applied in After Effects CS5, looked so good that only a couple or so A1 shots made it into the final edit.

Knowing that we’d be shooting in incredibly low light, I was tempted to invoke the ghost of Kubrick past by asking Zeiss if they could make me an F0.7 Toadeye lens, but lacking the budget of Barry Lyndon, I instead opted for one of my all time favourite lenses, the Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye. This was used wide open at F2.8 (and at F4.0) with the 5D Mark II’s ISO set at 1600 – high enough for excellent low light performance, low enough for noiseless performance.

The ‘security camera’ sequences were mainly shot with the 5D Mark II mounted on the Sachtler FSB-8 tripod (with timecode and captions added in After Effects CS5). Of the other sequences of our free runners, some were shot handheld, some with the 5D Mark II mounted on a Red Rock Micro shoulder rig and some with the EOS 5D Mark II flat on its back, or propped up at an angle in front of walls. Placing immense faith in our free runners and demonstrating that they weren’t the only ones prepared to take risks, we even shot some sequences lying on our backs with them leaping over our heads! Many of these shots would have been completely impossible with any camera other than the Canon 5D Mark II.

By the early hours, we had everything in the sweet bag except for the ‘eat me’ and ‘drink me’ cutaways, which Chris & I decided to do as a separate mini shoot. For this, we used a Canon 7D with Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 EX DG at F2.8, shooting at ISO 800, both handheld and on a Sachtler FSB8 tripod, with lighting provided by a single Litepanels MicroPro. Towards the end of this impromptu on location shoot, we were approached by a pair of typically over zealous security guards, who had convinced themselves that we were filming the building behind us and needed a permit to do so. Tempting as it was to tell them to get lost, as we were on public land and so perfectly within our legal rights to film whatever we wanted, we found it more amusing to play them the clip of the Jaffa Cake we had just been filming, then watch the expression on their faces as they disappeared into the night shaking their heads in bemusement and disbelief.

With our final shoot complete and Mike’s low res files coming in thick and fast, it was time for a rough cut, for which Premiere Pro CS5 was used. Premiere proved to be the perfect choice of editing software for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is able to work with HDSLR footage natively without the need for transcoding, saving a huge amount of time and disk space whilst retaining the quality and integrity of the original files. Secondly, it is very good at importing HDV footage direct from tape. Thirdly, it makes it easy to mix different file types and resolutions on the timeline, an important consideration since we would be mixing native DSLR footage (1920 x1080p H.264), with Mike’s transcoded DSLR footage (1920 x 1080p 10 bit 4:2:2 QuickTime), low res proxies thereof (480 x 270 QuickTime) and HDV (1440 x 1080i). Premiere automatically scaled the HDV to the master resolution of 1920×1080 and it took just two clicks per clip to scale Mike’s low res proxies to the correct resolution, making them perfect for a rough cut. Fourthly, ‘Adobe Dynamic Link’ allows round tripping with After Effects CS5, making it possible to adjust/re-adjust clips in After Effects ‘on the fly’, without the need to transcode/export/import, thus ensuring a consistent colour space and absolutely no loss of quality when moving between these two applications. Finally, Premiere makes it straightforward to swap proxies for full res clips by simply changing the file references, which is exactly what I did when I received a 1GB hard drive full of them from Mike…which he sent me the day before he got on a plane to LA, to start work on the new Muppet Movie!

The final piece of footage was supplied by Visual Effects wiz (and one half of the world’s only Thomas Dolby tribute band, ‘The Pirate Twins’) Darren Goldsmith, who created the dust effect at the beginning of the video, using After Effects CS5. The accompanying sound effect of Thomas blowing this dust off the dobro was accomplished by placing a Zoom H4n in a large, quiet room and recording blowing noises from a couple of feet away (in 24bit 48KHz stereo) in order to capture some of the room’s natural ambience. This was then pitched down to match his voice.

The rest of the foley (sounds effects) were third party samples of individual barnyard animals, layered onto successive audio tracks and mixed with Premiere Pro CS5’s built in audio mixer. The applause at the end of the video (which was added as an afterthought) came from Thomas’ gig. Since, at the time of shooting, there was no intention to use this audio, no effort was made to capture it separately, so remarkably, the recording comes direct from the Canon 5D Mark II’s tiny built in mic, which proved itself far more capable than is commonly suggested.

With the final cut complete, it was time to move to a grade for which Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Suite 10 was used. The black and white sequences were handcrafted with a mixture of Looks & Misfire and the video as a whole was graded using a combination of Colorista II and Looks (all running as Premiere Pro CS5 plug-ins). This was the first time I had used this brand new version of Colorista and its significant new functionality came in handy, especially its impressive masking and keying, which proved invaluable.

Finally, ‘The Toadlickers’ was rendered as a full HD (1920×1080) H.264 file and uploaded to YouTube in its full HD glory. On an 8Mbit connection, this took longer than the entire Parkour shoot, however, it was worth the wait, as the 1080p version on YouTube looks surprisingly close to the original.

Epilogue

Sadly, our two puppet turkeys, ‘Bernard’ & ‘Matthew’, ended up on the cutting room floor. Their current whereabouts are unknown. At this time of year in particular, our thoughts are with them and their families…

© 2010 – 2015, Paul D. All rights reserved.

Author: Paul D

Paul D is a multi award winning director & producer who makes music videos, documentaries & feature films. His recent 'Toadlickers' promo for multi Grammy nominated artist, Thomas Dolby, won Gold in the W3 Awards, Gold in The Davey Awards, was nominated for 2 Webby Awards, reached #18 in YouTube's 'Most Watched' Chart and was broadcast on The BBC. http://bit.ly/eruHnO

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