The entire shoot was done in one day, except for having a rough theme in mind the day before. At work earlier in the week, a co-worker pointed out that I looked like an old cobbler while working on my set. He sneaked a photo with his phone and, although I never saw it, I assume I was hunched over the table, tinkering with a troublesome shoe. The cobbler theme itself didn't particular inspire me, but it ended up evolving along the lines of "evil marionette maker". You know, Gepetto gone bad. I wasn't exactly sure how that was going to happen, but I hit a few garage sales and thrift stores anyways on Saturday and picked up five decent dolls to play with (i.e. destroy).
On Sunday, I went over to my friend's house, we scoped out his basement, and sketched out some ideas. The first was having the puppet maker watching his son at the work bench, passing on the creepy craft to the next generation. But that idea was scrapped in fear of it seeming too Pinocchio-ish.
The next few hours were spent traveling to various eccentric hardware stores (most of which are closed on Sundays, we learned), the costume rental shop (we decided to both get costumes for this, although we weren't exactly sure how to fit my character in yet), and more thrift shops. At one thrift shop, we found an incredible cuckoo clock for a mere $275. Soon, the conversation led to the idea of renting the thing for the night, for 1/10th the asking price. My friend further bartered it down to $20 and we had ourselves a deal.
Other than a brief nacho break, the entire afternoon was spent building the set in the basement. We had stained some paint stir sticks before we ran our errands and they were dry by the time we returned. Those, tied together with twine, became our puppet sticks. Twine was thrown everywhere. Rusty tools thrown up on the wall, next to the $275 cuckoo clock.
Lumber, burlap, sawdust, and string enveloped the tiny room. It was impossible to keep dangling string out of one's hair and dust off one's feet while walking through there. For a change, we were genuinely pleased that he kept the basement so dirty.
Once all the tools and puppets were hanging and even more sawdust was sprinkled onto the floor, we changed into our pantaloons, which were surprisingly comfortable. Basically, shorts with elastic to tighten just below the knees. No stranger to poofy shifts myself, it was the tights that were the odd part. Can't say I'll be doing another shoot set in the late 1700s/early 1800s anytime soon.
The final image ended up being a composite of twenty five shots, with the majority of them being small detail shots of the various points of interest around the room. The middle third of the image is the base layer that I worked with, and mostly one solid image, originally.
One thing I later wish I had thought of beforehand was hanging an old wooden sign outside the window, with some sort of "Smitty & Sons - Marionettes" kind of logo painted on it. Still, with just one day to plan, prepare, and shoot, overall I'm happy with it.
EXTRA IMAGES:
