Muppetry and misery in Manhattan: the recipe for new Netflix drama Eric explained by DP Benedict Spence.
A script about a missing child, a TV show puppeteer and a giant monster puppet set in the seedy underbelly of 1980s New York “sounded incredibly exciting and bats**t - in a good way,” to cinematographer Benedict Spence, “There was no way I wouldn’t do that.”
Spence had received the script by award-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Shame) from director Lucy Forbes and production company SISTER with whom he had just made This Is Going To Hurt.
That was in summer 2022, and six months later Spence was in Budapest with star Benedict Cumberbatch as bereaved father Vincent and larger-than-life puppet, Eric, a creature of his imagination.
Real deal
“It’s a psychological thriller bordering on a fantasy with a lot of world-building because of its period setting,” says Spence who shot all six episodes with Forbes directing. “The puppetry scenes were incredibly rewarding and very complicated.”
The Netflix production designed two versions of Eric: a suit that fitted the design parameters of a Sesame Street-style children’s television show, and a hallucinatory Eric that would interact with Vincent and look more grounded in a public world.
Experienced puppeteer Olly Taylor is mostly inside the hallucinatory Eric suit performing...
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