The latest Oregon Lottery spot, “Turkeyzilla” has stomped his way into the hearts of Oregonians everywhere. Announcing the annual Oregon Lottery Thanksgiving Raffle, Bent Image Lab’s latest collaboration with Borders, Perrin, Norrander features a Godzilla inspired, money-made turkey clomping through the streets of downtown Portland. The spot is a throw back to the Sci-Fi monster films of the 50’s and employs the ancient art forms of marionette and Bunraku puppetry to bring the monster to life.


 
Directed by Bent’s Paul Harrod, the :30 spot begins with a large, dark shadow looming over the city of Portland. As people stare in amazement a huge turkey made entirely of American greenbacks descends upon the city. “Instead of running in terror from the monster people are actually chasing after it…” says Harrod. “Everybody wants some of that turkey money.” Turkeyzilla clumsily stomps through the city, narrowly missing several Oregonians including: an ice-cream cone consumer, 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.

 
The concept came from Border, Perrin, Norrander’s Copywriter John Heinsma and Creative Director Terry Schneider. “The raffle is big so we wanted to do something we hadn’t done before,” says Agency Producer Scott Fox. “We’ve never done a giant turkey!” Harrod was especially enthusiastic about the monster movie theme as he is such a big fan of the genre, “The basic idea was to somewhat parody a classic b-monster movie either Godzilla or the kind of 50s science fiction that involved atomic mutations…and turn it on its ear.”

 
Designed and built by Art Director Kimi Kaplowitz and Puppeteer Sarah Frechette, Turkeyzilla is a combination of Czech style marionette and Japanese Banraku style 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-dominate hand. Another rod goes through the top of his body and is controlled by the puppeteer’s dominate 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 creating the need for 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 says, “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 TV commercial.”

 
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 at Mission Control.

 
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 (i.e. the money being sucked into the vacuum and the clouds of money that surround Turkeyzilla in the background of some of the shots).

 
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 effects were done old school. For example the bicyclist that rides by on his tall bike 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 the pole. Later in post the turkey was composited in to replace the image of the pole so it appears that he took the money directly off of the turkey.

 
“It was awesome! [working with Bent],” says Fox. “It was great to work with Paul. In the animation world he is the right one to go to!”

 
Harrod credits Bent’s “under one roof” capabilities and his team for making the spot work so seamlessly. “We have strong fabrication capabilities, and a great stage crew, but that’s supplemented by a CG department and a compositing department that can bring this whole thing together,” says Harrod. “It’s great to walk down the hall to talk to Kimi my art director, or Evan my compositor…and be able to bring them all together and really get everyone on the same page.”

 
When asked what he liked about directing the spot Harrod said, “What do I not like about directing it?…parody, humor, giant monsters. They are all part of a cocktail of joy for me.”

 
Turkeyzilla began airing throughout the state of Oregon on October 3rd.