BEN SPIEGELMAN PRODUCTION DESIGN

(in this sweet pic by Amber Hamilton, DP Andrew Russo plays a 55 foot tall peeping tom)

Let's Dance

This short was directed by John Thompson for Playboy TV. It’s shockingly non-erotic and experimental for their programming. Watch it online here!

The story is about a man who feels trapped in his world and disconnected from his wife. To externalize the main character's internal state in the mise en scene, John decided we simply ‘make everything out of grey paper.’

You don’t realize how many small pieces go into a house until you have to make each one individually. Which of course I did not do: I had an amazing and humoungous crew of papersmiths.

While we were making everything in the universe we made a few different scales of miniatures that our leading man will get composited into using John’s wacky stop-motion styling’s (you can look at those here).

Luckily, the end result was pretty rad.

Stay tuned to Playboy TV to see it air in August or September. In case you’re curious about the ‘male gaze’ (a concept introduced in 1975 by Laura Mulvey) read this great blog.