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Miniature Market Comes To Life

This homage to the beloved Rankin and Bass holiday specials of yesteryear, like Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, was created in-house by The Ottawa Visitors Center's Digital Media Producer, Joey Urso. "We knew the commercial would be playing in Chicago, which has a long history of Christmas specials like Suzy Snowflake and Hardrock, Coco and Joe. We decided to play on that nostalgia, capturing the spirit of those old specials,” Urso said.

By Ryan Searl

This homage to the beloved Rankin and Bass holiday specials of yesteryear, like Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, was created in-house by The Ottawa Visitors Center's Digital Media Producer, Joey Urso. "We knew the commercial would be playing in Chicago, which has a long history of Christmas specials like Suzy Snowflake and Hardrock, Coco and Joe. We decided to play on that nostalgia, capturing the spirit of those old specials,” Urso said.

The 30-second commercial will play on Chicago's WCIU ahead of this year's Chris Kringle Market. The festival brands it's self as a quaint, homier, alternative to the hustle and bustle of the larger holiday artisan markets. "WCIU has a long history of playing retro programming. So when Joey presented this idea to us, it was a no-brainer. The Chris Kringle Market is known for having a similar nostalgic feeling, a lot of people compare it to 'a Christmas movie brought to life'," said Ottawa Visitors Center executive director Curt Bedei.

To begin the pre-production process, Urso watched numerous holiday specials, cobbling together elements from all his favorites. From there, he created designs for each of the characters, sculpted their heads in plasticine (a wax based modeling clay), cast the models in plaster and finally made molds with liquid latex. “The Rankin and Bass specials used wooden heads, but I’m not much of a woodworker. I knew I could get a similar look with clay,” said Urso. The molded heads were then affixed to armatures, metal skeletons with ball joints, that allow animators to make the minute movements that constitute stop motion.

“Nearly everything you see is handmade. All the costumes were sewn by Lauren Pfeffer, I gave her some rough designs and she ran with that,” added Urso. Altogether, there were nine characters featured in the 30-second commercial. Three carolers, four smaller elves and, of course, Chris Kringle. "I also built 11 scale models of the artisan vendor huts you'll see at the Chris Kringle Market, all the felt trees and the scroll Santa opens at the end, showing the dates of the market."

The background was made by stitching together several close-up photos of Jackson street’s Lincoln Douglas Debate Mural in Photoshop. Urso then painted over the characters in the mural, making them look like the puppets featured in the commercial. “It’s only on screen for a few seconds, but I thought it was a nice touch. You can see The Roxy theater in the background as well." The Staved Rock Country Easter eggs don't stop there, former Ottawa Times journalist Steve Stout even leant his voice to Kringle.

"The typical cinematic frame rate is 24 frames per second recording. So with stop motion, you take 24 pictures for every second of footage that happens. I would make out a game plan of how each shot will go, and where the body should be at a particular time. So you move the body a little bit, take a picture, move it a little more, take another picture," Urso said. “Trevor McCandless, a friend of mine that went to school for animation, consulted on the project. He helped me out with the frame rates and workflow early on.”

Now in its fourth year, the Chris Kringle Market is fully embracing the recent resurgence of stop motion's popularity. "We'll be offering two free screenings of The Nightmare Before Christmas on Friday December 13th. Vendors will even be encouraged to decorate their huts like movie," said Bedei. "Nightmare Before Christmas is one of the most popular stop motion films of all time, so the commercial really ties everything together."

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