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Every production is a unique challenge, or as Maria Fernando Cristo, head of production services, at Dynamo puts it “a little monster of its own”.
Directors of film, commercials TV drama producers all want
to avoid repeating something that has been shown before. They will go the extra
mile to devise a new shot in a new location with a fresh feel to tell the story
even if it only appears for on screen for a few seconds. But those requests
cannot be fulfilled without the expertise and specialist knowledge of
production services.
“As a company we must adapt to everything that is thrown our
way,” says Cristo. “It’s about working together with the client and local
agencies to make their vision happen.”
Bogota, Colombia-based Dynamo is both production services
supplier for foreign productions like Narcos (Netflix), and Gemini
Man (directed by Ang Lee) and producer in its own right including 18 TV
shows and 40 features (Monos, Tarumama).
For the Peter Berg directed thriller Mile 22,
starring Mark Wahlberg, Dynamo organized a drone shoot over Bogota’s main
square close to the presidential palace.
“It’s like asking to fly a drone around the White House,”
she says. “No-one had done this before.”
It was a request that took some
time but with the collaboration of various government
entities, they achieved the shot. Dynamo also found other locations in
the city and nearby to double for a storyline set in Southeast Asia. Berg even
allowed Colombia’s president at the time Juan Manuel Santos to try to
shoot one of the action sequences of the film.
“Every time we do something new,
whether it is working with the military, or a local city mayor or importing
specialised theatrical weapons, we all learn something new and it paves the way
to grow production in the country,” Cristo says.
The following is a snapshot of
some of the more exotic production services and what lies behind delivering
them.
Animal
magic
The old saying ‘never work with children or animals’ relates
to them both being hard to control but in the case of wildlife this isn’t
necessarily the case, says Chris Brown, Director, Tooth n Claw.
“What you’re doing is taking what an animal does normally
and understanding their behaviour to put a camera in the right place. It’s not
about animals performing tricks. You get them to go from A-B usually with food
incentives. A set environment will be a huge stimulus for the animal – it’s
play time.”
Animals of all kinds can be sourced from casting agencies,
where private owners might pay to have their pets on the books, from zoos and
professional keeper/trainers catering to the film and TV biz.
Tooth n Claw is a consultancy tasked with everything from
finding animals to being responsible for training and designing the shot. Brown
likens the job to receiving the punch line for a joke and having to work out
what the set-up would be.
“We rarely get the full script, only a sequence in storyboard
form,” he says. “It’s then a problem to solve.”
To film a hawk flying through the air Tooth n Claw designed
a green screen sphere into which they placed the hawk on a perch. With the aid
of wind machine they could gently lift the hawk’s wing and gradually encourage
it to hover in the air. A 360-degree
camera-track enabled them to shoot the bird from virtually any angle with
backgrounds comped in post.
The company’s bread and butter are commercials. Pigeons for
Mini, snakes for Vauxhall, dogs and cats for Paddy Power. A recent BT
commercial needed a particular canine character that would fit with the
on-screen family.
“You put the same effort into casting an animal as you would
a human. It’s all about having a believable character to sell the story. If it’s
a dog on a lead, then not so much, but if the dog is required to look in a
certain direction then, even if CGI is applied to make the dog talk, the head,
eyeline and posture needs to be right.”
For the Fox/Canal+ adaptation War of the Worlds the
filmmakers wanted a sequence set on a crashed bus featuring hundreds of ants.
“We filmed this with a macro lens on a table-top miniature
and provided a nectar line to draw the ants from one side to the other. They
may be insects but you still need duty of care – you can’t just sweep them away
after each shot.”
Insects aside, the use of animals will incur a flat rate
(species depending) usually related to the amount of training days required.
That changes if the animal in question becomes the ‘face’ of a brand – such as
pet food. In which case, there will be an exclusivity fee.
“We’ve supplied almost every type of creature but it often
the situation, not the animal, which is bizarre,” he relates. “For a Bollywood
movie set in the 12th Century we had the lead actor riding two horses in
dressage formation with a falcon on his arm while flanked by twenty elephants.”
Box out
1: Build a bear
For a
forthcoming BBC and Netflix documentary (working title ‘Our Universe’) Tooth n
Claw was tasked with finding a hibernating brown bear to be matched with
footage shot in Alaska.
“We
designed a bear cave with four moving sides for camera access in a LED volume,”
explains Chris Brown, Director, Tooth n
Claw.
The
animal itself, an 8 ft beast, was hired from a keeper in Hungary whom Brown had
worked with previously.
“Firstly,
the European bear is similar to that of North America. Secondly, it is a
creature that has been bred in captivity and not in a small zoo enclosure
either. It roams in an area of forest half the size of a football pitch. It is
very used to human interaction –– even I could go in with him and feel safe.
In
addition, we could stage the shoot at a nearby studio so the production came to
the bear not the other way around. The
welfare of the animal comes first. If we have to compromise, we won’t do it.”
The
stage itself was ringed with a cage for protection of the crew while Brown and
the bear’s handlers were inside. The camera was on a crane outside the cage
able to be dropped in to any point.
Ships
ahoy
Marine coordinator Jason Martin can supply anything from
sail boats to cargo ships as well as a flotilla of support boats for filming
the vessels from. The former South African navy diver now gets sent on missions
that sound like a covert operation.
“For Jack Ryan S2, Paramount flew me to Colombia
where I put together a team consisting of South Africans, Americans and a local
group,” he says. “From the pictures of the craft the producers were looking for
I contacted shipping agents (located in places like Panama, Cape Town and
London), with the vital statistics of the vessel and dates we needed.
“It’s difficult to get an active working vessel. Few if any
will stop work for a film. Even tuna boats will make way more money than a
production can offer. Cruise ships are the hardest in this regard. So, most of
the boats are in dock or decommissioned. Sometimes we strip them down and
convert them for the duration of the shoot.”
Martin has a database of crew too – capable of sailing and
diving and also filming underwater. “It’s easier to train a diver to operate a
camera than a cameraman to dive and not drown while trying to keep the camera
steady,” he says.
His company Frog Squad is currently busy servicing One
Piece, Netflix’ big budget live action adaptation of a popular Japanese
manga about pirates.
“The biggest pitfall for producers is cutting corners and
not speaking to the right people,” he says. “We have the experience to know
what is needed for an oil rig movie or a shark movie. The production will end
up saving money because we’ve already done the R&D in how to make an
airplane crash into the sea or how to make a ship turnover.”
Shooting on the open ocean is “prohibitively
expensive.” He says, “Part of my job is working out how to balance VFX and
in-camera shooting. VFX has a cost but so does doing it for real because you
having to manage everyone’s health and safety on multiple boats. There’s a
definite shortage of water tanks and those that aren’t busy aren’t necessarily
located in the right place with the rest of the locations a show might need
nearby.”
One vessel that Martin has never been asked to supply is a
nuclear submarine. That’s because these craft are shrouded in secrecy. For the
BBC thriller Vigil, set about a nuclear sub, production designer Tom
Swayer talked to former submariners and scoured the internet for similar
vessels. The space had to be big enough to contain the story action and
flexible enough to work in and yet retain all the claustrophobia of a real
submarine.
Guns and drill
With two decades of armed service in the parachute regiment,
Paul Biddiss is now a military technical adviser putting together bespoke
training packages for actors and extras, advising on the type of weapons to use
for period or type of character – and which on companies supply them - to
assist director, costume, VFX and art departments.
“My job to coordinate battles, advise
the director and AD, train the cast and stunt crew and extras and be on the
director’s shoulder guiding them through any issues.”
He says, “Military advising is
60% research and the remainder is your experience as a soldier. Whether the
character is special forces or a Roman Centurion the mindset is nearly always
the same. The actual drills, the way you
march and move, will be tailored around the weapon.”
For BBC mini-series War
& Peace (2016) Biddiss was hired with three days’ notice to go to
Lithuania and train 500 extras in how to move on a battle field of the
Napoleonic war.
“I did a lot of cramming, reading battle field journals of
the era, not Wikipedia,” he stresses. “I learned how they were trained, the
relationship between officers and men and applied a safety-first training program that fitted what was
required of the script.”
For Foundation, the 2021
AppleTV+ series based on Isaac Azimov’s science fiction he designed a unique
drill system. “The guards were supposed to be like storm troopers but had very
cumbersome armour. The drill is part Roman, part Napoleonic and some modern
day. I combined all that into a movement you’ve never seen before and only
those guys had ever done.”
The use of armaments on set is
a hot issue since the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust late
last year. While everyone awaits the outcome of the investigation, greater attention
than ever is being paid to handling weapons on set.
“You never mix live
with blank rounds in the military let alone in the film world,” Biddiss says. “The
golden rule is never leave guns unattended. I don’t care if you’re an A-lister
or an extra, the weapon stays by your side at all times.”
There are very
professional armorers and theatrical fire arms trainers he says, but not
all producers do sufficient checks.
“People should always do due diligence on everyone from
extras claiming to have military experience to people like me to make sure they
are who they say they are. Some extras agencies say they supply ex-military but
unfortunately people are not always honest. These guys want to get on a film
and will lie about their C.V. but not know one end of a weapon for another. We
call them Walter Mittys.”
Biddiss puts his extras through a selection process to prove
their mental and physical proficiency prior to joining a film’s bootcamp
For Oscar
winning WW1 drama 1917
he then individually trained actors George MacKay and Dean-Charles
Chapman. “George’s character was a more experience soldier so I deliberately
missed out things from Dean’s training so he would be more nervous and wouldn’t
trust his kit. It’s those little details that help authenticity.”
Box out
2: Drilling dancers for Cyrano
For a scene in director Joe
Wright’s musical adaptation of Cyrano, soldiers were required to spin rifles
and swords – the type of action you might see on ceremonial displays.
“To teach people to do that
kind of continuity drill normally takes a long time,” says Biddiss. “What I
learned on Cyrano is that dancers are the best people to teach. They got
in about an hour.
“I introduced them to a sword
drill which happens before they go into the dance routine and also taught them
a rifle drill with muskets. After the dance routine they sequed straight back
into the drills. Joe was over the moon with it because it took such little
time.”
That said, Biddiss spent two
weeks on the film, longer than the time he spent on 1917 became of the
need to drill such large formations of extras.
He
also coordinated a battle on Mount Etna during Cyrano while the volcano
was erupting. “It was the final day of filming of this scene involving 150
extras making a final charge. As we were driving towards it that morning we
could see the lava spurting up but Joe still wanted to film. We managed to get it done but some of the set is now completely
covered in lava which may confuse
archaeologists in a few years.”
Sustainability Solutions
When Louise Marie Smith set up Neptune Environmental
Solutions in 2007, ‘green runners’ were a common occurrence on film sets,
but they didn’t have the authority or respect needed to enact real change.
Now, the environmental footprint of a production is integral
to every studio contract and demand for Smith’s services have soared.
“When I was put on my first few jobs, producers and HoDs
didn’t take sustainability very seriously and I would get pushback on changes
such as hiring hybrids for transport because of the upfront cost. The long-term
budget savings weren’t considered.”
That has flipped to the point where sustainability is
embedded in the studio production process.
No Time To Die is a case in point. It was the first
Bond to have a fully-fledged sustainability program (led by Smith) whereas
previous productions of any scale – and Bond films are among the biggest –
simply didn’t have eco-friendliness on their radar.
“Demand has gone bonkers since the pandemic and the
awareness driven by Cop26. It’s almost like everyone’s had that chance to step
back with demand now driven from the ground up. Sustainability is not a nice to
have it’s a must have.”
Changes that make the most difference to carbon output are
handily the easiest to implement: swapping diesel fuel for renewables like
HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) and / or reducing the size and
running time of generators.
“The same vendors of diesel will sell HVO. You can take tens
of tonnes of Co2 off your using the same kit delivered by the same truck.”
Other wins include using LED lights, producing digital call
sheets and making more use of the mains grid to power on location. Smith will
go on tech recces to help source that.
Using EVs for travel, more efficient batteries and schemes
for set construction and disposal also act to reduce energy and waste.
Smith will put all of this into a carbon calculator against
measurements such as Albert or the Producers Guild of America’s Green
Production Guide
With energy costs rising globally, the need to optimise
resources is even more imperative and will carry an increasingly significant
tally on the bottom line.
“I don’t mind whether a producer genuinely cares about the
air their kids’ breathe or if it’s about shaving budget - any way we can get
the carbon footprint down is my goal.”
Box
out 3: Relocating Japan in the UK
For Invasion, a 2021 episodic drama about an alien
invasion, showrunners Simon Kinberg and David Weil tasked supervising location
manager Christian McWilliams with finding Japanese locations in the UK
when filming had to pivot from Japan as a result of Covid.
“One challenge was to find interiors for Japanese houses. I
researched location libraries and found suitable interiors in London. I later
noticed that the same place we used turned up in an episode of Killing Eve.
You couldn’t tell as an audience since it was dressed differently.”
Finding a substitute for a space observatory was a challenge
of another order. It was a major location for several scenes and not only
required working satellite dishes that could be filmed turning but the
surrounding landscape needed to resemble Japanese countryside.
“It would have cost
around £300k to recreate the scenes in VFX so a location was much more
preferable.”
McWilliams found the Chilbolton Observatory, near
Winchester, a working installation owned and operated by the Science and
Technology Facilities Council.
“Permission was very difficult
and took five months of letter writing but a big part of its remit is education
about astronomy and since the Invasion storyline was about children and
extra-terrestrial life they were very helpful.”
McWilliams also had to help
bring in Japanese extras and military vehicles for the four-day shoot and
sought additional permission to film a helicopter flying in to land at the
site.
“The landscape itself needed to
resemble Japan and the key here was that it’s an old WW2 airfield, flat with a
strip of tarmac, Nissen huts and adjacent green fields with no hedges. The
satellite dishes are considered to be props even though they’re 50 meters high
and required to rotate.”
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