I spent the morning on set as the live hands for Ziggy, played by Thor. Yes. Thor. I am in Iceland, remember? Anyway, I had to catch a football from a hike and then throw a lateral. You know how brilliant I am at sports. Fortunately it was a tight shot, so no one had
I spent the day being fairly domestic. I did laundry, cooked, washed dishes. Went for a walk. Read. Napped on the eighties sofa. Nothing terribly exciting, though I’m looking forward to my clean laundry. There are no driers in Iceland, or at least there are very few. All the washers are frontloaders, and all the
I have today off, but I don’t quite know what to do with myself. This is my first unstructured day off in Iceland. I feel a bit lost.
Lost in Translation Read More »
The rest of the afternoon went very fast, afterall. I was called in to help with a periscope and football shot. Were we where trying to make it look like a football bounced off a periscope. Not easy. I also played in the puppet shop some, trying to make the Mayor’s half-body legs walk. After
The Studmenn in concert Read More »
I feel a bit cheated. We’re working on Saturday because everyone got an extra day off the week before I got here. There’s something not fair about that. On the other hand I spent more time in front of the camera this morning than I have since I got here. I was on set almost
We started working as soon as we came in today. I did some right hands, but nothing terribly complicated. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this, but one of the reasons that I was hired is because the other puppeteers have fairly large hands and, in Jodi’s words, “they look freakish” when they do live
Ah, the green room. Read More »
Interesting. We were called in around 4:00, but still haven’t done anything. We have half an hour left till the end of the day, so I can only assume that they brought us in for tea-time. I used the time to start work on a new novel today, and am three chapters into it. It’s
Much to my surprise, they are letting us wait at home till they get close to doing puppet shots today. Which means I get to spend a little more time here.
I spent some more time with David walking. We showed it to Jodi who thought that it looked good. Then we showed it to Magnus, but there’s no way for two puppeteers to be on the puppet without the second one showing. It is frustrating because the harness gear makes the puppet walk like a
Trying to tie shoes. Read More »
I actually wound up working quite a bit today. I was in a couple of shots as hands or feet, but my primary activity today was on a full body shot that they would like to do, but they’ve had little success with the full body puppets thus far. So we spent, what seemed like
Oh, Tuesdays are going to be glorious, I can tell that already. This is the day that Guna comes in to give all the puppeteers massages. I’ve just had a really lovely massage and all seems right with the world. At some point today, we might actually work. Someone was making ominous comments about stretching
Today all of the puppeteers were called in for work and none of us did anything. I take that back. We played scrabble.
Today technically started at 1 a.m. with a phone call from Jodi saying that he and Sam were locked out of their apartment. (I was still up writing, so they didn’t wake me.) Anyway, they came over and crashed in my living room, on the giant sectional sofa, which is clearly a refuge from the
Culture day is one of the biggest celebrations in Iceland. 100,000 people come to Reykjavik to celebrate culture; it seems like there was music on every street corner. Jodi, Sam and I started the day downtown going to galleries. We visited a large church on a hill. You can see it from most places in
I went out with Jodi, Sam and Sarah to the Luxes, which is a luxury movie theater. It has leather recliners and serves beer and wine. The weird thing, and this is apparently standard in Iceland, is that every movie has an intermission. I don’t mean the Icelandic ones–we were there to see Hellboy for
A night at the movies Read More »