Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1196709
An existing exterior location still put the film at the mercy of the weather. We would always have to maintain continuity between all the day and night scenes. And as the interior of ohnny e ood's was too small, the interior set would have to be built on stage, expanding the sie appropriately in order to accommodate a large raucous party of eighty people and a lively dance sequence. And if the production was going to build an entire interior set, why not include the exterior, so if we should lose any shots at the location, we could do pickups on stage The sight lines of the windows required a backing of by feet. A seamless backing of that sie would not be possible without vertical seams every one hundred feet and a horiontal seam at thirty feet. In the past I have always relied upon hil reenstreet and his team at osco to provide me with whatever sie backing I needed, whether custom or rental. I have also been using their relatively new soft drop backings as they can easily C be shipped. ut their costs were beyond the realm of the film's budget, so we decided to use a local company. Another issue with a backing of that size is the resolution. We were fortunate enough to have en Wolofner, a Torontonian photographer who had access to a brand-new camera developed in ermany that could take photos with a megabyte resolution. The resulting image, created from an array of eight camera positions, makes it possible to spot a bird ying by five miles away. As line producer rendan Ferguson said, Wow, that looks crisp. y immediate thought was, should we have softened the focus ocular raphic Artist on the iper unter and I had already manipulated the image by adding additional color and placing eventual seam lines along telephone poles or trees. ut I wanted to keep the focus sharp since I was intending to cover all the stage set windows with a film of frost. As ohn Anderson, the visual aects producer, said, We didn't have to manipulate any shots when the backing was prevalent. e was very thankful for his team at Spin F were already approaching four hundred fifty visual eects shots in the final cut of the film. emember those lines about snow! ost of those shots were adding falling snow and adding clean snow. The snow came to be viewed as an actual character in the film. The one thing ohnny e ood lacked was a distinctive curve. ow was I to get my curve to help distinguish the set The obvious answer was the signage. A bold curve for the word WAFFL would do just that! And it could sit nicely atop the front facet of the existing building. This would also create a fun background element for the romantic rooftop scene between Tobin, played by itchell ope and B A. THE 300 BY 30 FOOT BACKING CREATED FROM THE EIGHT IMAGES OF THE EXTERIOR LOCATION PHOTOGRAPHED BY KEN WORONER AND STITCHED TOGETHER BY GRAPHIC ARTIST JON HUNTER. B. THE WAFFLE TOWN INTERIOR SET ON STAGE 10 AT PINEWOOD STUDIOS TORONTO. C. MENU BOARD FOR THE WAFFLE TOWN, DESIGNED BY GRAPHIC ARTIST JON HUNTER. D. THE WAFFLE TOWN ROOFTOP SET DURING FINAL STAGES OF CONSTRUCTION. CONSTRUCTED ON WHEELED SCAFFOLDING SO IT COULD BE REPOSITIONED FOR THE CAMERA. A