Client: The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts/ The Australian Film Institute
Agency: FremantleMedia/ Production Designer Kim Buddee
Brief: Create 6 Large-Scale Statues in the Image of the AACTA Trophy
With giant foam profiles cut by CNC hot-wire process, Big Kahuna sculpted and refined the graceful shapes with their usual array of finishing tools. We then epoxy hardcoated the foam form before making a vinyl-ester fibreglass mould in two pieces (including armature insertion jig) for the reproduction run of six oversized AACTA trophies (again in vinyl-ester resin to avoid line distortions commonplace with polyester resin laminations) standing 10 times larger than the gold trophies designed by acclaimed sculptor Ron Gomboc.
In his opening remarks, AACTA Founding President Geoffrey Rush joked that there had been a stuff up at the manufacturing plant and the 2.4m-tall BKI statues were actually what the winners would be taking home.
While working on this project, Big Kahuna developed a proprietary gold paint process to render the trophies because there simply wasn’t a product available which ticked all criteria for this Australian film industry’s night of nights.
After all was said and done, this is what Kim Buddee had to say:
Many thanks for the great work by you and the rest of team on the AACTA statues.
You did a fine job and I appreciate it that all came together as planned.
I’m sure we’ll see them pop up again over the years.
Thanks again,
Kim