What a day, what a day. Julie normally does the live hands for Jodi, but she wasn’t in today because it didn’t look like he’d need live hands.
And then…it started as a simple thing. Can the puppet tap his finger against his head? It looked bad with rods, and Jodi had to enter the scene, but I thought I could get in there with “fake” hands. This is when I wear live hand gloves but am not attached to the puppet. We’re faking standard live hands. We tested it, and I could be there. It was one of the most uncomfortable positions I’ve had to hold but figured it was a short shot.
Little did I know that for the rest of the day we would be returning to that position for different angles or variations. Now, I don’t mind pushing through discomfort, but in this particular instance, because Jodi was coming to where I was, it meant that we were in a slightly different configuration every time. Not much. A half-inch here or there. But when I’m not attached to the body that little bit can be enough to make the arms completely unbelievable. Add to that the need to touch the puppet’s head. I look in a monitor and have no depth perception, so I have to base it on a kinetic sense of where the head is in relation to me in order to make sure I don’t miss it. That kinetic sense is blown when the puppet is in a slightly different place.
All of which means that it comes down to luck. It worked. We got shots that are good but it was intensely frustrating to get there.
I have not written anything today except this. I feel okay about that.
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