I’m building a rig to make trash rain at work. The director wasn’t happy with the way the trash falls, because it’s heavy. He thinks it falls too fast to look good or “real.” So he asked for options and along with the other things brought to the table, I mentioned a possible puppetry solution. He asked to see a test of it, and liked that.
Basically, each puppeteer will have a spray of rods with pieces of trash on them, in each hand. We’ll have them fall through frame at the speed and direction the director wants. The rods are all painted green so they can key them out, leaving only the trash visible. We’ll have to co-ordinate movement so that trash never passes behind someone’s rod, but we ought to be able to get some good movement. The director knows that the quality of movement will be totally different from the real falling trash but still wants to try it.
I just got the supplies, so I’m going to assemble the trash sprays tonight. In theory we shoot it on green tomorrow.
