Pranksters turn city street into frozen nightmare
Baby, it's really, incredibly cold outside.
At least that's what some unsuspecting taxi passengers thought when they stumbled upon sub-zero street, complete with frozen traffic cops and delivery men, snow-blown surfaces, and icicles hanging from every surface. It was like a scene from a disaster movie. Which is, of course, the idea.
The prank video, which dropped on Monday morning and you can watch above, is the latest from Thinkmodo, the twisted minds behind "Devil Baby," "The World's Strongest Traffic Cop," and "Automated Selfie Stick."
Like virtually all of Thinkmodo's other viral videos, this one was designed to cleverly promote a new film, in this case, Geostorm.
Starring Gerard Butler, Geostorm is the breathless, (though maybe theoretically possible) tale of human efforts to control weather gone disastrously wrong. Warner Bros. was hyping the film heavily over the summer, right up until the real-life Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida and the film company smartly pulled back on all advertising.
Now, with the film's October 20th release less than a week away, they're trying this new approach. The prank video takes a light touch to illustrating what a sudden, powerful, deep-freeze could do to one city street.
The taxi riders, who were not in on the prank, learn of the weather change through Taxi TV, where they see a weather bulletin read by none other than NY1 anchor and frequent blockbuster cameo star Pat Kiernan, about an unusual weather event.
"Some areas are experiencing sudden and extreme drops in temperature and severe icing conditions. This is happening very rapidly, in some areas within seconds," warns Kiernan in the fake breaking news segment as the taxi rolls into the staged street.
Suddenly, frozen birds start dropping out of the sky and then a nearly frozen man appears, begging the riders to let him in.
Thinkmodo took incredible care building a real-world version of Frozen. The iced cop, delivery men and 12 other human popsicles were detailed mannequins that the company covered with acrylic ice. As for those birds dropping out of the sky, they were resin-covered taxidermy fowl.
While the icicles dropping from every surface look like they flowed and froze naturally, Thinkmodo told us that they're actually 400, individually-crafted icicles, made out of an acrylic resin mix developed by SFDS Fabrication and Design. SFDS shared the special effects load with Brooklyn Model Works.
The snow, 57 bags of it, is a cellulose and water mix that was sprayed on the ground and over surfaces. They also brought in an industrial fan and snow machinates to deliver live snowfall.
The cleanup was about as bad as you would expect from your average New York City snow storm. It took five hours to shovel up the, thankfully, bio-degradable snow.
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
