The fox and the ice cream

I made a 14 second film of the fox on a Brooklyn street on the hottest day of a 1989 summer. It opens from a rooftop over the block. A man's arm reaches out of an ice cream truck and hands him a cone. He holds it up and looks at it, puts out his tongue for the first lick, and the lick pushes the whole scoop off the cone onto the pavement. He stands there with his tongue still out and the empty cone in his paw, then stares at the camera.

What I took from Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) is set on one block of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn over the hottest day of the summer. Ernest Dickerson shot it. The heat is in every frame: the block is warm reds and oranges, people sit out on the stoops, and much of the music comes from the street, the loudest of it from Radio Raheem's radio. The camera often sits low and close on a wide lens, so faces and bodies fill the frame and the buildings rise behind them. As tempers rise, many of the shots are tilted off level.

I took three things from it: the setting, which is one Brooklyn block in a heatwave with people on the stoops; the camera, which is low, wide and close, with a tilt; and the year. I took nothing from its story or its scenes. The fox film has its own joke.

It is one place and one simple story, and the joke is on the fox. He wants the ice cream, and he loses it to his own first lick.

Why the prompt is written the way it is

I never name Spike Lee or the film in the prompt. I write each of his choices out as something you could see, so the model is given the decisions themselves and does not have to guess what a name means.

"Shot on grainy 35mm film stock in 1989 on location on a run-down residential street in Brooklyn, New York, during a heatwave." I name the year and the film stock so the cars, the clothes, the grain and the faded colour of the time come with them, without my listing each one. In the film the car at the kerb and the clothes on the stoops look of that time.

"It looks like a gritty, low-budget independent film of that year: raw, real, slightly faded colour, heavy film grain, nothing polished." A video model's habit is a clean, glossy picture. This line tells it the look is rough on purpose.

"The colour comes from real things: red brick, painted doors, people's bright summer clothes." In other films I have made with Seedance, words like blazing, glistening and saturated gave a rendered, animated look, where the street turned into a film set. So here the heat is written as things a camera would photograph: hard sun, deep shadows, people fanning themselves on the stoops, rubbish bags on the kerb. The colour comes from what is in the street.

"No sun rays, no lens flare, no glow, no haze effects." I write these out because they are easy ways for a model to show a hot day, and they make a picture look made by a computer. Saying no to them in the style block and again in the list of things it must not do keeps the street looking photographed.

"Every shot after the first is from very low down, almost on the ground, on a wide-angle lens held close to the fox, looking up at him with the brick buildings and fire escapes towering behind and above him, the frame tilted a little off level." This is the Do the Right Thing camera in one sentence. Low and wide makes a small fox look big in his own street, and the buildings above him make the block feel close and hot.

"The camera is locked off within each shot and cuts straight between shots." I keep the camera still within each shot and let the cuts between shots carry the pace, because every camera move is a chance for his face to drift from the reference pictures.

"He is the only animated thing in the film. Everything and everyone around him is real, photographed for real." Our fox films work when he is a cartoon fox in a real world, the way Paddington is a computer-made bear in a real London. The man's arm at the truck and the people on the stoops are written as real so the model keeps them that way.

"For the heat he wears a plain white sleeveless vest, a plain red baseball cap with no logo." He usually wears a hoodie. In a Brooklyn heatwave the vest and cap put him on the block with everyone else.

"His expression never changes, even when he wants the ice cream." When I have asked Seedance for a fox who is excited, it has given him a big grin and wide eyes. Our fox is bored and grumpy, always. How much he wants the ice cream shows in how carefully he holds it, never on his face.

"A plain wafer cone about as long as his paw, with one perfectly round scoop of pale vanilla ice cream sitting on top, the scoop about the size of his fist." Every prop gets a size against his body, so the cone stays the same size from shot to shot.

"It is a round scoop, not soft serve, no swirl. It is firm and frozen and does not melt or drip at all." The scoop must look safe right up to the lick. If it melted and leaned first, the viewer would see the fall coming. And it has to be the same round scoop on the cone and on the pavement, so the prompt rules out a soft-serve swirl.

"High shot looking straight down from a rooftop over the whole Brooklyn block." The film opens on the place, the brownstones, the stoops, the truck and the fox small beside it, so the viewer knows where they are before anything happens.

"Close-up from the side, his face in profile on the left of the frame and the cone on the right." The gag is his tongue pushing the scoop off. Side-on, you see the tongue touch it and the scoop tip over backwards. From the front, the tongue would hide where it meets the scoop.

"The tip of his tongue is still out, the empty cone still held up in his right paw, the scoop by his trainers." After the fall he does not move for two seconds. The wide shot keeps the stoops and the people in it, so the whole street is there with him.

"MUSIC: an original late-1980s hip-hop beat with a heavy drum and bass line, playing loud from a radio somewhere on the block, never any existing song." The music is written as coming from the street, the way the loudest music in Lee's film does. "Never any existing song" keeps the model from reaching for one it knows.

"No readable words, signs, labels, graffiti or logos anywhere." Lettering in our earlier films came out as made-up words, so there is none.

The prompt

It was given two of our own pictures, the fox from the front and from behind, and no picture of the place. Here it is as it was run:

STYLE: Real live-action film footage, shot on grainy 35mm film stock in 1989 on location on a run-down residential street in Brooklyn, New York, during a heatwave. It looks like a gritty, low-budget independent film of that year: raw, real, slightly faded colour, heavy film grain, nothing polished. Hard, flat afternoon sun and deep shadows. No sun rays, no lens flare, no glow, no haze effects. The street is real and worn: cracked pavement, peeling paint, rusty fire escapes, black rubbish bags on the kerb, a battered old car. The colour comes from real things: red brick, painted doors, people's bright summer clothes. Every shot after the first is from very low down, almost on the ground, on a wide-angle lens held close to the fox, looking up at him with the brick buildings and fire escapes towering behind and above him, the frame tilted a little off level. The camera is locked off within each shot and cuts straight between shots. The stylized fox character from [Image1] and [Image2] is placed into this real world the way a computer-animated bear is placed into a live-action family film: his face stays exactly as the references, with realistic dense orange fur, damp from the heat, real contact shadows on the pavement. He is the only animated thing in the film. Everything and everyone around him is real, photographed for real.

PLACE: A Brooklyn block of red brick brownstones with high front stoops and iron railings. Real people sit out on the stoops in vests and shorts, sweating, fanning themselves with their hands, in the background. A plain white ice cream truck is parked at the kerb behind him, with no writing, no logos and no pictures on it. No readable signs, labels, graffiti or words anywhere.

CHARACTER - THE FOX: One fox, compact small frame, slim build, fluffy orange fur, cream cheeks, heavy-lidded golden yellow eyes, thick orange tail with a cream tip. For the heat he wears a plain white sleeveless vest, a plain red baseball cap with no logo, his two ears standing up through it, dark blue rolled jeans and white high-top trainers. Bored and grumpy in every shot: eyes alert under flat, heavy lids, brows a little low, mouth a flat line. His expression never changes, even when he wants the ice cream. Keep his exact face, fur colour and size the same in every shot. He has exactly two arms and two paws. He stands on the pavement in every shot.

PROP: One ice cream cone held upright in his right paw only, his left arm hanging at his side: a plain wafer cone about as long as his paw, with one perfectly round scoop of pale vanilla ice cream sitting on top, the scoop about the size of his fist. It is a round scoop, not soft serve, no swirl. It is firm and frozen and does not melt or drip at all. It is the only food in the film.

0-3s: High shot looking straight down from a rooftop over the whole Brooklyn block in the heat: the street, the stoops crowded with people sitting out, rubbish bags on the kerb, the plain white ice cream truck parked at the kerb, and far below, small, the fox in his red cap and white vest standing at the truck's hatch.

3-6s: Wide shot from low down at the side of the truck, looking up. A real man's arm reaches out of the truck's hatch and hands down the cone. The fox takes it in his right paw, his face bored and grumpy.

6-10s: Wide shot from right down on the pavement, the camera low and tilted, looking up past the cracked kerb at the brick buildings and fire escapes towering against a pale, hot sky. The fox walks slowly away from the truck straight towards the camera, the cone held up in his right paw, getting bigger and bigger in the frame, until he stops close to the camera, his body filling the lower half of the frame.

10-12s: Medium shot from low down looking up at him, tilted. He stands still and holds the cone up in front of his face in his right paw and looks at it under flat, heavy lids, bored and grumpy.

12-14.5s: Close-up from the side, his face in profile on the left of the frame and the cone on the right. He leans in slowly and puts out the tip of his tongue for one careful first lick, upwards on the side of the round scoop. The lick pushes the whole scoop off the top of the cone. It tips over backwards and drops out of the bottom of the frame.

14.5-16s: Close-up at ground level beside his white trainers on the cracked pavement. The round scoop lands with a soft splat and sits there, whole.

16-18s: Wide shot from low down, tilted. He has not moved. The tip of his tongue is still out, the empty cone still held up in his right paw, the scoop by his trainers, the people on the stoops behind him.

18-20s: Close-up of his face from the front, low down, tilted, the cap brim above his eyes, the empty cone in his paw below his chin. He pulls his tongue in and stares, flat and bored, straight into the lens. Nothing else moves.

SOUND: A hot city street in a heatwave: distant traffic, a car horn far off, people chatting on the stoops, the ice cream truck's engine idling. A soft splat when the scoop lands. MUSIC: an original late-1980s hip-hop beat with a heavy drum and bass line, playing loud from a radio somewhere on the block, never any existing song. The music cuts dead when the scoop hits the pavement and only the street sounds are left. No dialogue, no narration.

NEGATIVE: Not animated, not a cartoon, not a 3D animated film, no computer-generated people or buildings, no rendered or polished look, no sun rays, no lens flare, no painted background, no game look. Everything except the fox is real, live-action photography. The fox never has wide eyes, never grins, never smiles, never opens his mouth wide, never looks excited or cute. No hoodie. The ice cream is a round scoop, never soft serve, and it never melts or drips before it falls. He holds the cone in one paw only. No readable words, signs, labels, graffiti or logos anywhere, nothing written on the truck or the cap. No fire hydrant spraying water. No dog, no bird, no other animal. Only one scoop of ice cream, the size of his fist in every shot. No second fox, no change to his face, no feral animal on all fours, no human hands on the fox, no extra arms or paws, no distorted anatomy, no floating. No close-up of sweat, no drops of sweat on his face. The fox never catches the scoop and never eats any of it.

How I cut it from 20 seconds to 14

I asked the model for 20 seconds and cut the film to 13.9. I took out the 4 second walk towards the camera and the 2 second shot of him holding the cone up, and cut from the truck straight to the lick. As the truck shot ends he is holding the cone up, and as the close-up starts it is still in front of him, so the cut reads as the next moment. It also gets to the joke sooner.

What came out, and the rules I took from it

The street looks photographed, the people on the stoops are real, his face is bored in every shot, and the lick pushes the scoop off the cone side-on. Some things differ from the prompt. The rooftop shot looks down at an angle, not straight down. His trainers came out low, with a Nike swoosh on the side, which the prompt said not to draw. We kept them. The truck has a small coloured picture on its side in the rooftop shot. And the tilt is easier to see in some shots than others.

Write the heat as things you can see. Hard sun, deep shadows, people fanning themselves and rubbish on the kerb give you a hot street. Blazing and glistening give you a rendered one.

Write out the director's choices one by one. Do the Right Thing became a year, a film stock, a place, one camera position and a tilt.

Keep the cause of the joke inside the joke. The scoop is frozen hard until the lick knocks it off, so the viewer finds out when he does.

Shoot the gag from the side it can be seen. A tongue pushing a scoop off a cone only reads in profile.

And look before anyone else does. I checked the cuts with ffmpeg's scene detection, read the lick at eight frames a second, and counted his arms and paws in every shot.