To usher in the annual Oregon Lottery Thanksgiving Raffle, Portland-based animation studio Bent Image Lab teamed with agency Borders Perrin Norrander, Portland, for a spot starring a Godzilla monster movie-inspired turkey consisting of currency. The money bird, who clomps through the streets of downtown Portland, was created via the deployment of two ancient puppetry art forms.
Directed by Bent’s Paul Harrod, the :30 titled “Turkeyzilla” begins with a large, dark shadow looming over the city. As people stare in amazement, a huge turkey made entirely of American greenbacks descends upon Portland. “Instead of running in terror from the monster, people are actually chasing after it,” said Harrod. “Everybody wants some of that turkey money.” Turkeyzilla clumsily stomps through the city, narrowly missing several Oregonians including a bicyclist grabbing a fistful of turkey dollars, and a vacuum-armed woman sucking bills off of Turkeyzilla’s dollar dressed coat. The spot ends with Turkeyzilla stomping down the Portland waterfront, chased by enthusiastic residents.
Designed and built by Bent art director Kimi Kaplowitz and puppeteer Sarah Frechette, Turkeyzilla is a combination of Czech style marionette and Japanese Bunraku style puppetry.
Puppetry A traditional style of Japanese puppetry, Bunraku began in 1684 and involves three puppeteers at one time visibly controlling and manipulating the movement of a puppet via rods attached to the puppet’s hands, head, legs and feet. In contrast, Czech marionettes employ one puppeteer utilizing a central rod and strings to control the puppet. Turkeyzilla is animated using a few different combinations of rods and strings. In the Bunraku style, Turkeyzilla’s head sits on a static rod controlled by the first puppeteer’s non-dominant hand. Another rod goes through the top of his body and is controlled by the puppeteer’s dominant hand. The turkey’s feet are controlled by a second puppeteer with rods attached to either the front or the back of his feet depending on the direction the turkey is walking on camera. For certain shots the rod had to be transferred from the top of the body to the back of the tail, necessitating a third puppeteer.
Turkeyzilla’s wings are worked marionette style. A ring loops around the puppeteer’s thumb and attaches to strings that run from the ring down to either wing. The puppeteer can then move his/her thumb, manipulating the wings to flutter.
Frechette explained further, “What we did was modify these two traditional forms of puppetry to create a turkey puppet with movement and the personality needed for filming a television commercial.”
Multiple disciplines The spot itself is a combination of live action, CG, and miniatures. The turkey, money and other elements filmed on blue screen at Bent Image Lab were composited into the spot. The dark grainy quality, music and graphics were added later.
The money falling from Turkeyzilla and floating to the ground is both live action and CG. To create the movement of the live action money, the crew blew fake cash around with a leaf blower and fan and shot it on blue screen. It was then composited into the live action plates. The live action footage stood as reference for the 3D money created in 3D Studio Max. The 3D bills appear in certain scenes.
To create the shot of Turkeyzilla tripping over Portland’s World Trade Center sky bridge, Bent’s art department created a miniature of the bridge. Harrod and team then shot Turkeyzilla tripping over the bridge on blue screen at the studio. It was later incorporated into the shot with the live plate of the two World Trade Center buildings bookending the frame. Every detail was considered, even down to Turkeyzilla’s reflection on the windows of the buildings.
Some visual effects were done through old school means such as for the scene where the bicyclist reaches up and grabs a fistful of cash off the turkey. In reality he drove by a tall pole that had money attached to it and grabbed the money off of the pole. Later in postproduction the turkey was composited in to replace the image of the pole so it appears that he took the money directly off of the Turkeyzilla monster.
