"Ten": The Ground-to-Air Defences

Here we have the first construction that I actually built for the movie. It took some planning and about eight to ten hours of construction and re-construction, and the props are going to appear for probably five seconds in the final cut. Well, if you're going to do something right...

Anyway, what I was aiming for here was some futuristic anti-aircraft guns that are used to shoot down any incoming spacecraft approaching the moon. This means that the guns would have to rotate on a turntable and also raise it's gun barrel to just short of straight into the air. This was the result:



My first breakthrough in designing these was the decision to use X-Pod saucers to go on either side of the gun itself. It gives it a nice sleek look and implies that they function as shielding. The way the gun barrel will rise and fall while the saucers don't seem to rotate was another plus. Here's a shot behind the red discs:



The color choices were very deliberate. This being black and white, I want most of the props and sets to contain black and probably no more than two shades of gray (One of them being the dominant). Too many different grays would make it look muddled. The black sets it off and makes a nice sharp contrast to the rest of the prop.

The one concern I have with this is the antennae and gun barrel both being black. When I eventually shoot this, I will for the first time be using green screen. My concern is that the black parts that intersect with the green screen (which will eventually project a star field) will tend to blend in. The antennae can easily be changed with another color, but the gun barrel would be more difficult. We'll just have to wait and see until we do our first green screen test.

Next Week: The Skyscraper