GROUND COFFEE

Snatched a paper template, chomped it out of thick chipboard slightly smaller than the actual location, glued it to a scrap of an old sheet made to the template's full size. This way, the fabric, although finished the same as the hard board area, will be able to conform and adjust its size on the fly. After painting the top a rich brown and letting it dry, I coated the whole surface in sections with matte medium and sifted well-dried used coffee grounds into the wet medium. Shaking off the excess between each area. (It gets messy, but all can be swept up clean when done.) Generally, two coats of this grounds groundcover are needed to get a nice soil effect.

For the party, I added an additional top layer of petal confetti to the dance floor and hand-glued intact petals and small flowers.

I crawled like a bug up onto the middle of the full landscape set to make a brown paper template of the spot I wanted the Final Bug Party to take place, in situ. Had just created a separate modular set for the bug band to sit on top of an adjacent set piece next to the white picket fence. The Bug Party begins with hearing the band playing at night, the camera is drawn closer to the fence, panning along it, as slivers of the band and party lights are seen between the slats all along its outside. That dissolves into:

The main Bug Dance Floor and Mushroom Circle Cafe shananigans. The piece is being shown as it was being made above. This is where we make a pan along the same direction, left to right, from the bugs dancing away (under the goldfish disco ball), move into the mushroom tables as attendees chatter and squeak, eat cake like bugs, and generally indulge in their fun. Ending up at the far right end of the set, a lone little fellow is tasked with cleaning up all the messes and dirty dishes alone in a muddy puddle.

It's all completely planted out now (see the essential tool I use to install the grass into the set here), with short grass blades in the front and very tall grass in the back to obscure the backdrop. I now plan to shoot the Bug Party in my workroom rather than on the main set. It's just too awkward to shoot in the middle of that whole landscape; the height of it is uncomfortable. It's not supported by a stage once you move out of the cottage's zone; after that, it's just flats and folding flaps of bulked-out cardboard balanced on sawhorses and such. So, now being able to place the party on a table elsewhere, separated by greenery camouflage pieces, light it, and shoot it more easily, should be a much better solution.

The party sets will be photographed in the full landscape for an establishing long shot, after the entire scene takes place, as we fly away with a bug from the party toward the cottage as a location shift.

The party scene is meant to be a bit of comic relief before the later scene in the dark, when the crow woman Tarn arrives in her highly dramatic state. Commenter Jill suggested we see a foreshadowing of her wing silhouette on the ground near the cottage as we approach, which I think is such an important way of signalling the shift in tone. Thank you, Jill! She also suggested having one of the bugs nibbling on the blackberry bush inside the cottage, too. I think that will make a great way of transitioning from the party fun to the quieter evening scenes.