DP: Even though a ton of work goes into building and lighting the interiors, we found them much easier than exteriors. You don't have the control shooting outside that you do shooting inside. The light is uncertain, constantly changing, and scale is difficult to visually maintain.
TP: A lot of people have looked at the outside warehouse shots above and assumed it is real building. It is actually a facade we set up on a power company access road in the woods near where I live in western Massachusetts. The two walls and roof section you see are all that is actually there. The high windows on the long wall are the same windows used on the interior shots. Those same doll house windows appear in several of the subsequent episodes in various configurations.
DP: It was very windy that day so we had to work around the set blowing over.
TP: It was originally our intent to have Knight enter the warehouse from the rear and get the drop on the bad guys. This would have required exterior shots we weren't able to get due too the wind. As an alternative, we opted to have Dave take a few quick shots of Knight shooting through the wall while I held it upright from behind.
DP: This allowed us to have Shepherd use the “Flying Captain Kirk Kick” that we all loved seeing in Star Trek to take out the last opponent. If you read all of the AESOP episodes you will see many Star Trek references as Tod and I are both fans.
DP: Lark wears a leather jacket that was made for Barbie’s boyfriend Ken. His clothes never looked so cool. The Wolf and the Crane title was taken from one of Aesop’s fables. Each of the team member's codenames, Shepherd, Lark, Knight Crane and Hawk are likewise from Aesop's fables. We named the bad guy Wolf after the title. His real name is Vladimir Bojick. Bojick is wolf in Russian.
TP: Speaking of leather jackets, the one Shepherd wears on the opening pages was handmade by Dave. By this time you might realize, as I have, there is nothing we needed that he could not put together.
TP: If you look closely the first panel of the page below you notice Shepherd kneeling in a way you cannot manage with a Classic G.I. Joe figure. This is also evident on page three of the previous episode. At this point the release of the super articulated G.I. Joe figure was still several weeks away, so we made our own, using a Dremel to reshape the back of his thighs and calves so he could kneel more convincingly. He wasn't pretty with his pants off, but it worked.
DP: After shooting everything we had to put it all together. For this we mostly used Adobe Photoshop. I had never used Photoshop in my life. I can remember sitting in our hotel room at the 2001 G.I. Joe Convention with Barry Vedros trying to teach me how to make word balloons and me being frustrated as hell. For the first two episodes we used pieces of three or four different graphics programs to put things together before we learned our way around Photoshop.
TP: Skip and Robin Are, of Project Are, custom made the body bag used for Crane's body. Hard to believe as it might be, this is probably not the strangest thing I ever asked them for. While Dave was the builder, I was our scrounger, searching far and wide for figures, wardrobe and props we might need. As we worked on AESOP we were very fortunate to have the help of many good friends like Skip and Robin, who we could impose upon.
DP: The Epilogue shots would also have been shot outside the warehouse had conditions permitted. With our second episode deadline looming, Tod shot the last scene alongside a canal a few miles from his home.
TP: I initially tried shooting this sequence on the opposite bank but the sun was wrong. It looks like a beautiful day, but it was mid-July and very, very hot and the figures kept falling over and getting covered in sand. This, coupled with the fact that we trespassing on an old industrial site, made it interesting. In the end I was happy with how the pics turned out, and I think the additional location added a bit to the wrap up.
