Sock it to me

The sock and the Addidas shoe.

Saturday. Crew call was at 7:00 am. That meant I had to get up at 5:00am, wake up (brush teeth, wash face, etc) get all my gear sorted and packed, grab a bagel from the continental breakfast tray and take a 45 minute ride to the shooting location.

It was hot and standing on the side of the road didn't help. I drank bottles and bottles of water while waiting to jump into action doing the visual effects thing. The big visual effect for this movie is to replace the main actors leg with a computer generated artifical one. To help out there was a stand in, Grant, who wore the same type of leg technology that Terry wore 25 years ago. Grant would be used for shots where you would see Terry in the distance or from behind. All the other shots would be of Shaun from the waist up so as to not see the leg or if you did see the leg it would be a visual effects shot. All the visual effects shots were designed by Tom Turnbull who also happened to be the visual effects supervisor and my employer. Tom is one of those guys with a very modest attitude who has exceptionally high standards for his work. He also has integrity something I find lacking in the visual effects world that I've worked in.

On set visual effects people have to do a lot of waiting around. Unless you're working on Star Wars or something huge usually we have to stand around waiting to get to the visual effects shot. Because the Terry Fox movie has a visual effect that is required for the whole movie we were stood around on set looking for details that the other crew might overlook, and to be accessible should the director require a "new" shot or angle.

While waiting around next to the heat reflected road I had another job to do and that was to take pictures of the sock. Sock? As in that thing you put over your foot? Yes sock. Over the course of the film we follow Terry Fox running across Canada. During the run his sock gets more and more used. It got dirty. It might have even started to show wear. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. On average Terry ran about 40 something kilometers a day. I'm sure the sock would have taken a beating.

They're creating a CG model back at the office they have to match it to the sock that's being shot on set for that particular group of scenes. The sock may not even be registered on the TV screen when all is said and done but as someone said "It's better to have more than less cause you never know."