Seen and noted

Some background from the director, Kevin Donovan.

"Oddly, perhaps pathetically, I am one of very few directors who had experience directing penguins- twice even. And both times in South Africa. And I had the worlds best fake penguin maker, Ron Stefanuick, willing to travel half way around the world to help. I am sorry, Ron, that we not only blew the arm off your Emporer Penguin, but also caught him on fire in the Kill Bill-ish blood- spewing scene. We had amazing support from everyone in Africa. We had a minimal crew and everyone was doing at least 3 jobs. I began in wardrobe so that was no problem, but script supervision, or lack there of, was a new thing that I didn't learn very well. We did one day at Tina the Penguin Lady's house then two days in the frozen tundra averaging about forty set ups per day. Two takes of anything was a luxury. 'Not in focus? Fine, it's an art piece.' The explosions were so big that our buffed up Weapons Officer opted out of the last few takes. No one was hurt... badly... A little sun stroke as Ron Stefanuick refused to puppeteer underground fearing that 'the little people were going to attack.' The people at The Big Picture Co. pulled all their favors and worked tirelessly to pull off a job that often seemed insane. And, no penguins were hurt in the filming, although Tina turned her head as Trevor Brown, our fabulous D.P., who somehow made sense of my anxious ramblings, ran mercilessly at a herd of her little birds with a menacing camera. It was one of those projects that we were shooting so fast that I was never really sure what we had. And when Charly at Homestead starting patching it together we had a lot of areas where it looked less like a horde of birds and more like a gaggle. Charly was really amazing in weaving together the footage where many holes existed. Then came the really hard part: making the unruly birds seem like they were an organized army. The guys at SUSPECT, Tim and Rob and the whole crew made this ugly duckling their new little pet. Much of what they did was simply creating birds that never exsited- and miraculously meshing them into the shots where real and animatronic birds already sat. When you have a really good idea like Wes and Mitch and Regina at McKinney had, everyone from the director/wardrobe stylist down to Ron's 12 year old daughter who spun penguin heads, becomes much more vested in the result. My producer, Tara Handley worked for more than a month on this albatross with no pay. You just can't buy that kind of commitment; which is good, because we spent all the money buying fake blood, explosive fuel and Windhoek Lager."