Inspired by skypurr’s recent topic
here ,
I decided to do a making of.. for my entry in the recent Movie-themed PF competition.
First of all, if anyone has never seen this film (it’s a real gem IMO),
keep on eating the juniper berries!
Here are a few stills from the stoning scene:
I chose this scene to recreate in Playmobil
(a) because it is VERY funny (watch it on YouTube
Stoning WARNING: this clip could be regarded as offensive to adherents of
at least two major world religions.)
and
(b) because the false beards worn by the women at the stoning
are easy to do with PM.
The actors in the scene in the film are mostly men, some of them
pretending to be women pretending to be men (!)
I realised that I needed figures with bare arms and legs to get the
authentic period costumes, so I looked through what I had to hand
and found mainly women. So apart from the prisoner guy (who is
wearing just a loincloth and chains; he had to be a male PM figure)
and the Official (John Cleese in the original), ALL my figures were
female, including the two guards holding the prisoner!
The immediate problem with this was how to disguise them as men.
In the movie, the crowd all wear baggy clothes (and false beards) to
conceal the fact they are women (quite apart from the fact that most
of the actors were men). I used a variety of aprons, cloaks, hoods,
bibs, a sling full of rocks and a poncho.
The beards were easy to fit: mostly they were just pushed on, a couple
were clipped in place under the hair and one was on a string. Only two
of the beards matched the hair colour, as befits false beards.
Three of the women also had shaggy hair, like wigs.
The guards were both based on female figures too (to get the bare arms and legs).
Bathrobes, collars, ACW Southerners hats (backwards), slippers, beards
and a few pieces of felt disguised them as guards.
The prisoner was a male klicky, a swimsuit guy with shaggy hair and a loincloth.
And finally the official. To make his enormous hat, I stacked up a pith helmet,
a motorcycle helmet (backwards) and a gold hair-net. His long scarf was felt
(quickly but inexpertly marked with felt pen) draped over his headgear.
A sand-coloured sheet of paper, a steck wall and careful arrangement of the figures
to hide the blutack and clips holding things together, then I took the photos.
A little inexpert Photoshopping to remove the arrow slits in the wall and
addition of the speech bubble using another photo-editing program (ACDSee)
and the picture was finished.
And the donkey leaning on the wall?
A reference to the previous scene in the movie
“I haven’t got time to go to no stoning- he’s not well again.”
I meant to put a large rock in the scene too (a reference to what happens
right at the end of the scene) but forgot! Oh and I also forgot to include Brian!
