When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Friday 11 March 2011

Shoot that thing!




After changing a flat tire in the pouring rain and driving to the tire shop, Jody and I arrived to the shop 3 hrs past when I was hoping to get there. We only had a little bit of hair to go and fingernail painting left. We took care of that pretty quick and loaded him up for his starring role. After a 2 hour journey, we arrived on location and it was still downpouring.






The frozen lake we were shooting on was a slushy snow plateau. I was a little concerned at first because the wind was really starting to pick up, and the yeti was 10' tall. We did put a steel pipe in his back,
and were able to position a grip stand behind him for added wind support. The stand was very well hidden behind his giant girth.
After we got it all assembled, we got to drizzle blood all over him, the actors and  anything else that wasn't
red! It was now time for my guest appearance in the shot. I headed to the cube van where a Sherpa outfit was waiting.

 The weather quickly turned into a blizzard at that point, but at least I was dressed for it. Matt shot pictures for about 30 min, we all changed positions a few times, did some running back and forth and then that was it.
By then I was cold and wet, and Sherpa wardrobe boots are not waterproof at all!

All in all it was a great build. Matt is a great guy who is very flexible to work with. The crew was fantastic, as well as Donna Irvine in the wardrobe dept. It seems a bit crazy that all this was started only 3.5 days ago. Being able to use straight forward, easy to navigate software, our Techno cnc router and our experience in creating weird stuff, we were able to pull off a huge build in an extremely short time frame.


I will post the final picture of the shoot as soon as it becomes available to us.

---Sherpa Jamie

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