Interactivity

And today we were back in the green. Screen. Room. Which was... okay. Turns out sets are way more fun. Locations not as much, with the weather and the noise. But I digress. Once more we have a unit rented at Storage 2000 with our green-screen set up within, and today we captured some small pieces that the film had been sorely lacking.

When we filmed with Mare in 2009, we couldn't get ourselves a Toto. We tried to track one down before we finished filming Dorothy, but to no avail. We were only able to locate one Cairn, and its owners didn't understand the extremely low budget nature of the film and requested that a ridiculous contract be drawn up. We politely declined and instead gave Mare a green stand-in to handle, keeping physical interactions between Dorothy and Toto to an absolute minimum.

Because you can't get this out of a styrofoam ball.

Our regular readers (if such a thing can exist here) will know that last year we found and filmed the perfect Toto; Wiley. We spent a day getting all his green-screen shots, and his owner Glenda has brought him out for two of our location shoots so we could have Toto present with minimal hassle. Today we brought him, and our Dorothy stand-in Carrie Minter, over to the green-screen for one last round of photography.

Carrie's an 18-year-old Marine, but she's tiny, actually probably a little smaller than Mare was in 2009. She's been our stand-in for certain pieces of our Kansas shoots, as you can see in this video and will see more of later. This was the first time we've had her on the green-screen, to get some shots that we've needed for four years.

Only one of these two has multiple close-ups in the movie. Hint: It's the one with the chauffer.

Mostly the day consisted of Carrie holding Wiley under her arm from various angles. There were a few specific actions that we needed to get from him though, like him struggling and then jumping out of her arms. You know what that was for. Wiley was a trooper and we got everything we needed to fill in our little gaps. Then we stepped outside and grabbed a couple more pieces.

Literally?

First we got some foot shots of Dorothy that also featured Toto, then Wiley took off and we snagged a few more with just Carrie. I had six shots from early in Dorothy's adventures of Oz that were close-ups of her feet in the grass, and the prospect of handling them in CGI was making Drew feel like crying. Exact quote. So we reshot all those in the grass outside the storage unit. So. Magical.

It's like something out of a fairytale.

And that's all she wrote. Or he, all he wrote. Stop mixing your genders up, Clayton. It was a short day, but we accomplished everything we needed to and are officially finished with Carrie and Wiley. And actually Dorothy and Toto, by extension.