10 000bc 2006

Roland Emmerich's 10,000BC is a much derided film but afforded me a great opportunity to combine my career in film making design and fabrication with my love of paleo art.

Shot over many months in South Africa, Namibia and New Zealand, it was a gargantuan undertaking for everyone involved!


One of my first tasks on this film was to participate in the design and fabrication of some primitive stone age tools and jewelry:

Next I was tasked to realize Production Designer Jean-Vincent Puzo's    
 

vision of a shaman's hut made from the carcass of a giant mammoth bull.

 I developed a small tabletop maquette at 12th scale to plan the build:

With the model approved I prepared for the sculptural element of the full set build by borrowing bones of both an African and Indian elephant from the Iziko Natural History Museum

Here are some of the vertebra in progress. Carved from a urethane foam and coated in plaster.

This set was originally intended to be assembled and filmed in the Drakensberg of Southern Africa, a last minute decision was made to relocate to Wanaka in New Zealand!

 For the last leg of the filming we returned to Africa to shoot at Spitszkoppe in Namibia. Same location where some of the footage for the Dawn of Man sequence from 2001 Space Odyssey was shot.

I made some Sabre tooth skulls as set dressing.