Turtle Wrangling....

...aint no joke!!! it was the last day of the shoot yesterday, and those turtles bitch slapped and sliced every last one of us!
We ended up taking a company field trip to the local sea turtle farm-they were set up in huge tanks by size- smallest that we saw were about 18" diam. and the largest in the pool was 500 lbs..(I didnt get to see this one though..it could have been an urban myth)

There were 6 turtles selected for the casting- all about 24-30" wide and 30"-36" long. Heavy SOB's-about 150 lbs and SO strong. It took about 2-3 people to handle them.

So they were trucked over to the beach and set up near the water. The scene was that the boy in the movie was running down the beach and saw these turtles on shore and started playing with them.

There were about 12 of us placing these turtle in the sand, about 2 feet from the ocean (and their freedom) The difficulty was getting them into place, watering them down so they glisten, and then filming it fast enough before they made their break for the water.

By then end of the day, we all had looked like we got Zoro- marked with their flippers and shells. Not to mention being bathed in turtle goo.

but it was an awesome experience!- I'll have to upload photos when i get back.