For a solid month my life was centered around a fuzzy, blue worm on a string. It all started, like many great ideas, at a brainstorming session for something completely unrelated. We were planning out a comprehensive social media campaign to promote the college’s counseling center and somehow our attention shifted to the late 1970s toy turned cult internet icon, worm on a string. My student worker, Kiera, and I began developing outlandish and absurd scenarios that we could insert these adorable little worms. I knew we had to do something with them. Luckily it was early March, and I knew the perfect excuse-erm-reason to make this happen.
Meet Wormo
The main idea came to us easily - Falco, the College’s official mascot, would be replaced by Wormo and, in a fit of jealousy, Falco would conspire to get rid the usurper and regain his title. Coming up with this idea was easy, but executing it was far from it. The number of moving parts for such a small video was surprisingly high. We needed to identify students actors, film product-video style videos of the worm, recruit extras for group scenes, and capture man-on-the-street interviews.
Making It Real
In order to really sell this video, to make our audience into thinking it’s real, we couldn’t settle for anything less than the highest production value we could muster. Without access to a studio with a cyclorama, we had to think creatively. By utilizing my connections with faculty and staff in the Performing, Visual Arts, and Communication program, we were able to borrow a 9-foot roll of white paper, as well as large stagings block. Our two “marketing professionals” were filmed against the white backdrop, which convincingly made it appear that they were in an infinite, white void.
Fake it till you make it
By making the most of our small “studio” space, we were able to fake and infinite white cyclorama.
Wormo’s product shot sequence presented the most challenges of the production. It felt like no matter what we did, we could not find the Goldilocks solution. For example, if we filmed on a table, we could get the lights high enough due to the low ceiling. If we filmed on the staging block, we couldn’t get the camera low enough. Solutions of involved trying plans B, C, D, all the way through G and beyond.
One particular shot that I wanted to get was an orbit around Wormo. A shot like that would normally involve a rig the allows a camera and a backdrop to rotate 360 degrees around a small platform, but like many projects there was no budget. I could not afford to purchase one of these rigs personally so I attempted to build my own using a slider, a Lazy Susan, and some brackets. While this MacGuyvered contraption had potential, it suffered from some pretty serious shortcomings that prevented it from being used in the final product. For example, the platform that the object sat on needed to be held in place with a c-stand, which prevented the camera from making a complete rotation.
You Spin me right round
The first attempt at a spinning 360 rig was far from pretty…or stable.
It wasn’t all difficulty and headaches. One part of the product shot sequence that came out particularly well was of Wormo crawling out of the letter “O”. To achieve this shot, I used the font chosen for the video as a stencil to cut out a hole in a piece of foam core. I then covered the hole with green paper so I could mask and key out the background so just the worm was visible. Since I already mocked up how I wanted the text to look in After Effects, I was able to position the camera so that the hole matched the rotation angle of the text.
Lessons Learned From A Worm
Producing this “Wormo” video was incredibly enlightening and personally fulfilling. I learned a lot about the limitations of our equipment and space, and how important experimentation is. Wormo may not be the official mascot, but he’ll always be the best mascot to me.