PERSPECTIVE TESTS:

First still tests of perspective. Shot in my messy flat, girlfriend Stine helps out. Car gets a bit out of focus, but it works. 'Water' seems to work as well, using a transparent gel with a colour tint.
ANIMATION TESTS:

First animation test shot at home. Stine pulled the trigger while I was
figuring out how much to move between each shot.

Another way of doing the 'walk' was to actually move the body forward for
each frame and build a dolly so that the camera could move as well. Here's
the test, works, but it would have been a too complicated shoot.

We also made a 'fighting the dinosaur'-test. An idea that got killed later on.
Instead of moving the camera for each frame we thought we'd make a fake floor out of pillows and other random stuff we could find at home. If we moved the floor for each frame it would give the illusion as if someone was walking forward.

Here's a test I made while Stine was working, I had to animate myself, then animate the pillows and here's the result roughly comped together.

I found this software online, Stop Motion Pro, which seemed to work quite well and I ended up buying it for the actual shoot. Worked great, altough it doesn't work on Mac, so I had to borrow a PC to be able to use it.
One final test.
CASTING:

We met a bunch of people and asked them to try to mimic what was on our printed freeze frames. I was standing on a ladder taking pictures with a crap camera, a few hours later we saw the results as we animated the images.
The winner. Simon, looped.
SHOTLIST:

Click on it for bigger image. We decided to kill the last part, where Simon would fight
against a giant shadow puppet monster. We simply hadn't enough time in the studio.




THE SHOOT:

Images from the shoot, shot in the Amadeus Centre in London, December 2007.

The set.


Simon, the actor, and Trevor, the DP, together with the weird shark we found.


I'm explaining how the shark attack will work.
We didn't have any guide for the animation so everything was based on gut feel.


Simon found a fishy thing that looks like something else.


Picking fishes for the underwater scene.


Trevor upstairs preparing for some perspective tricks.
We needed plenty of light in order for it to work.


Shots were triggered from downstairs via laptop (and a very long cable).

Everyone is helping out with moving pillows and stuff after each shot.


Simons face covered with newspaper, while 'driving the car'.
He got a pad to ease the pressure on his knees (since this segment took a few hours to shoot).


The set covered with smoke from the smokemachine ('the cars exhaust pipe').
In the background Rhun, the producer, and Sam, the production assistans and half of the horse, are working hard.