And finally, Amanda skates through the same airlock she came in. As the door drifts open, we see a layer of vapor flowing into a pile of dry ice inside the vault, with an assist from a wad of paper towel.
This scene was shot live with my iPhone 11 Pro, and then I simply played the video in reverse and slowed it down for effect. Note the lighting which I did by aiming my GigBar Move DJ lights through the bunker’s ceiling grid, as in previous shots. The scallop-shaped stain on the wall to the right of the airlock was actually caused by the dry ice. And those faintly-glowing plants are actually neon aquarium decorations that are reactive to UV light. Trippy, eh?
I think this was actually the latest night shot I did. Checking the timestamp it was 3:50 AM. But I did typically stay up later while editing.
This opening MOCO shot took an enormous amount of setup. This is the first time we see the enlarged Bunker of Evil.
First, the walls are covered in printed paper panels to look like concrete.
My son 3D-printed that airlock door for me. We assembled it together and I painted it with layers of rusty, iron tones. Then I drilled a hole in the top in order to mount my small UV light inside it, shining down into the vault.
That silver locker cabinet is yet another nicely made 1:6 scale prop I found from China. If you look closely, there are several bags of desiccant and miniature junk food in the shelves on the left side. I simply gathered all the desiccant packs shipped with various props, and decided that some of the POSERS would ignore the “DO NOT EAT” warnings printed on them. The junk food chip bags were made by SummerMiniShop on Etsy.
In the foreground is a nice little wooden Tommy Bahama box that looks like a munitions crate. You can barely see a 1:6 scale gattling gun and ammunition box sitting over to the left, in the shadows. That’ll get used in a later scene.
That lava lamp is one I’ve had for a while, from Sharper Image. The challenge there was whether to composite it flowing in real time, or just let it boil with the animation. I chose the latter, to suggest that there is something super sinister about Kim Jong-un’s operation here. Hence the Evil in the Bunk of Evil.
Next there are four set pieces that are made from actual concrete. The two pyramidic planters on the right wall, a large round tray (placed upside-down, and the squarish pedestal on which my TerraMaster data center sits. And yes, I was excited to find something so perfectly sized.
Atop the supercomputer is its cooling tower, which I made from a peanut can and used to fill with dry ice for the steam effects.
Just out of frame to the left is my 1:6 scale Asteroids RepliCade made by New Wave Toys. That thing is amazing! It actually plays the game with the real graphics and sounds, and keeps high scores. The rug under it is UV-reactive, also made by the same company.
To the left, as we follow Amanda skating through the steam, there are a couple more props: Namely my Star Trek Captain’s Chair (which Dennis is sitting it at first. And a smaller round concrete platform. I wasn’t sure I wanted to use that chair in later scenes, but I think that’s a forgivable mistake since we don’t really see much of it in this shot.
All the power cables for these props are run through a small hole near the floor in the back wall.
This is the second scene taking place in the now-expanded Bunker of Evil. Amanda enters though an airlock door and skates past some rather exotic equipment on her way to deliver the Mona Lisa to Kim Jong-un, who is in party mode with Vonky Trump. Amanda is suddenly intercepted by Ambassador Rodman who grapples at her from inside his cage.
The bunker set is 2x2x4 feet in size. The walls are removable and symmetrical so it was pretty easy to flip it around to give the illusion of an 8-foot long set. That’s 48 feet long at 1:6 scale. This set also has an open grid ceiling, which is supported by a special reconfigurable frame I built in place.
The special effects were done with 10 pounds of dry ice over two days, both inside the airlock and atop the supercomputer’s cooling tower. Dry ice is rather difficult to work with as you might imagine. It boils best when dropped in hot water, but it doesn’t last long. And then you have to dump all that water every few frames so it doesn’t flood your set. But the effect worked, as Amanda skated fearlessly through the blasts of steam and who knows how many industrial toxins.
The biggest problem was capturing the blinking lights on my TerraMaster D5 data center, a RAID array. I used its startup sequence for the best LED activity. But it uses a Thunderbolt 3 cable which maxes at 3 feet. So I had to move my main iMac Pro behind the bunker set, then run the cable through an access hole just to get the blinky lights I needed. And that was super frustrating because it meant I had to control Dragonframe from my iPad using a Remote Desktop app. Between that and the dry ice, this scene nearly snuffed out my will to live.
This scene was my homage to the WOPR supercomputer scene in WarGames.
Mona Lisa wraps up her set, while chaos ensues on the floor. The music here was A Real Man by Sleater Kinney.
Funny, during summer vacation, my brilliant musician nephew from Tampa actually said, “You used a Sleater Kinney song?” To which I had to respond, “Yes, they shot a music video directly below my office window here in Portland. Carrie Brownstein is from the PNW, right here.”
This was the most complex animation so far, again with nine puppets in motion excluding Amanda in the top right corner, who is in what they call repose.
Those Marshall stack amplifiers actually work. They are 1:6 scale, except for the knobs — which are meant for guitar players to strap on their belt. Here, I’m just using them for their red LED power lights. Later I’ll use them for my electric ukulele on the front porch when I serenade our deer at happy hour.
We find ourselves in the Bunker of Evil with a chortling Kim Jong-un, a mysterious blonde sidekick, and some kind of large creature in a rusty iron cage.
This shot was a total fuck-up because I bumped something in Shot 413. So I had to switch to a close-up instead of trying to recreate and re-align things in the previous shot. I can’t remember the circumstance because I was probably disoriented from alcohol and/or the air in my studio being saturated with vapor from my Chauvet DMX haze machine.
So, I had to cut to a close-up of Rick O’Shaw (starring my Chris Pratt head sculpt) doing a drum riff. Note the laser light pointed squarely at his forehead in this frame…
We transition via a color plane effect from Vonky’s cocaine-covered table into a full blown rave taking place in the Mona Lisa hall of the Louvre.
This is a bobbing and weaving MOCO shot down a steep rail on my slider. It’s also the first shot in which you get a behind-the-scenes look at one of my sets. The silhouette of those theater lights are actually my Chauvet GigBar Move DJ light bar in full DMX blaze. DMX means the lighting is being controlled in stop-motion time by Dragonframe while I animated this most complex scene. Complex, because as you can see, there are ten puppets in this shot — all with their own back stories.
Most of Act 3 was done months ago, but I went back and incorporated an exciting new Star Trek subplot now that I own all of the available QMx 1:6 scale figures from The Original Series. Those aftermarket puppets cost me a whopping $2,269 for Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Sulu — plus their 1:6 Captain’s Chair for $109. QMx was supposed to produce Chekhov but they never released it. No Uhura either, but I did find a special edition Barbie version of her that works for $135.
I say Uhura “works” because in the POSERS universe, it becomes apparent that there are different species of POSERS. The Phicens, the Hot Toys, the Barbies, and a few other brands — all in various stages of evolution. Look for that to become part of the story eventually.
On September 23, 2021 I received three 3D printed 1:6 scale Star Trek chairs from a fellow Trekkie in Glasgow, Scotland. They’ll look fantastic in my USS Enterprise bridge scene. They shipped via Royal Mail and arrived here in Portland faster than the USPS can get something here from San Diego. Dunno how that’s possible, given Customs and all.
This is a long, continuously zig-zaggy MOCO shot following Amanda past several works of art and into the Mona Lisa hall. She pauses to savor the marble statue of naked Greek wrestlers, reflecting on her own sexual preferences to the Mona Lisa herself. She finally spins through the stanchions and lands atop an empty pedestal in the opposite corner, suspended from above by fishing line.
For this final move I actually studied illustrations of a skating move call the Waltz Jump. Which is fitting because the music for all of Act 2 is a French waltz, and therefore all of Amanda’s animation takes place in 3/4 time.
And that also means my cuts and camera moves through Act 2 take place precisely “on the bars” in the music.
