Wojahn Art Directs Miniature build

In January of 2020, Mark Wojahn's prop shop art directed and built a model town for the Duke Cannon company's advertising campaign. Wojahn hired Tiny Proctor as his lead builder and Benjamin Bayne with Kellie Larson dayplaying on the build. Together they executed a 9x9' layout of; dozens of buildings, a resin lake, a woodland stream, a farm & UFO, a downtown with a warehouse district and a neighboborhoods. This was built in the HO scale of 1/87 to the inch.

The model town had its' challenges, as there is an almost infinite amount of detail you can include in a miniature set. With Wojahn's shop working on a tight schedule, of a 9 day build, and closely with the production company and the ad agency, Wojahn and his team were able to pull a fine degree of detail on a modest budget. One item had to be 3D desgned and printed, it's an inch tall statue of man holdig a toilet, you can see the statue in the picture below lower right corner.

Builder Tiny Proctor adjust a miniature on set. The buidlings were a combo platter of minature kits purchased at the hobby shop, to pre-assembled buildings. Here is scenic painter Ben Bayne aging the Woodshop set. 

Painter, Ben Bayne, paints a model. The layout and models were built in Wojahn's and Proctor's studio in the Casket Arts Complex in NE Minneapolis.

The model layout under construction in Proctor's shop.

The layout, once completed, was moved to Cinequipt studios and shot in their Studio C. Once in the studio, DP Steve Holm used a microscopic lens at F14 to shoot the minatures. The high F stop required over 60,000 watts of light to illuminate the set, Gaffer Dave Palm used a 20K mimic the sun.

Director Cory Bauer illustrates the positon prop flames to builder Tiny Proctor

Channel Z Post's Cory Bauer directed and Kelly Nelson produced the spots in 2 days of shooting. Minneapolis agency Hunt Adkins was the advertising film. Many of the spots are now live on the Duke Cannon Youtube channel and elsewhere on the web.