Shooting the tests shed light on several obstacles that needed to be addressed for the main shoot. “We learned a lot by shooting things on a smaller scale,” Pope reveals. “At 1⁄3 scale, a small bump in the dolly track becomes much larger, like a 6 on the seismic scale. A 2-foot dolly move became the equivalent of a 6-foot move. We also had to figure out how to get the dolly to work at 4 inches off of the ground all the time, and how to make moves that were really tight. Additionally, we had to determine how to get the lighting in close and which depth of field to work at. We looked at shooting at T5.6 or T8 so that the depth of field would look roughly like it would if the puppets were life-sized. We also tried out shallower depths of field, like T4 and T2.8, which made them look more like puppets. When we screened the footage, we all much preferred the fakery of shooting at T4 than at a stop that would give us more depth of field. Shooting at T4 was equivalent to shooting a T2 or less when shooting a 6-foot-tall actor — it created a very shallow depth of field.”

“It was definitely a trial by fire,” confesses Stone. “Trey, Bill and [first AD] Eric Jewett have been really involved with figuring out how to even block this stuff. You can’t just do what will look good; you have to do what will look good and what is practically possible. For example, you can’t have puppeteers cross strings. Also, you can’t do any really low-angle shots, because you would see that there aren’t any ceilings above the marionettes. Likewise, you can’t have any really high-angle shots, because you end up with a bunch of strings in front of the lens. In addition to all of that, the puppets don’t really move that well. They can’t really walk, or look around — they can’t do much of anything! As a result, you have to block things really creatively. You have to map things out ahead of time, because if you don’t, you can really corner yourself pretty badly.”

The filmmakers soon modified their plans and scheduled for 13 weeks of shooting during the summer. “It was all difficult,” testifies Pope. “In the beginning, we tried as hard as we could to flog everything into moving faster, but the puppeteering requirements forced us into a pace that was just glacial. The entire crew ended up doing a lot of crossword puzzles, which were actually printed on the backside of each day’s call sheet. Once we set up a shot, it was often an hour before the puppeteering Condors were in place and the puppeteers were rehearsed. For that whole time, most of the crew — grip, electric and camera — were basically finished with what they needed to do. So there was a dead hour of waiting for every single shot.”

Asked if he tried to bang out footage by utilizing multiple cameras, Pope explains, “We did sometimes shoot multiple camera angles for a given setup, but because of the scale, it was hard to get a second camera in there a lot of times. Additionally, we incorporated a South Park convention in which the characters would address the camera directly; they’d be in the center of the frame and speak right to the lens. To Matt and Trey, that was very funny. So if every shot, wide and tight, has to have to puppets in the center of the frame and be able to talk right into the camera, that quickly rules out the use of a second angle.”

To guide the look of Team America, Parker and Stone gave Pope one steadfast mantra: “What would [Jerry] Bruckheimer do?” This single idea informed many of the film’s camera, lighting and narrative choices. “Doing the action genre was new to Matt and Trey,” notes Pope, “I have done action movies, but they’ve been sort of oddball ones. So doing a straightforward action film was somewhat new to us all, and whenever we had doubts about how to approach something, we’d often ask ourselves, ‘What would Bruckheimer do?’ The answer that we came up with was: when in doubt, move the camera arbitrarily. The more the average filmmaker would choose to be still for a quiet moment, the more the ‘action’ filmmaker would move the camera gratuitously. So we elected for as much gratuitous violence, action and kinetics as possible.”

To facilitate all of the freewheeling camera movement, Pope and his crew created several custom devices to move their PanArri 435 cameras on set. “We often used a custom-made straight-shooter-type base, where we had a piece of metal with Teflon pads that fit into another piece of metal with grooves in it for it to slide on. We had a two-foot version of those made. For round moves, we tended to work off of a dolly on dance floor. My first assistant, Greg Luntzel, manufactured a bracket that holds a 435 from the top so that we didn’t have to undersling the camera and could get the camera right down to the floor. However, we quickly came to realize was that within the world of the puppets, the crew working around them were all the equivalent of 18 feet tall and 4 feet wide, while the camera was as big as a car. It was very hard to get everybody in there to have access to the puppets. A loose hair on puppet’s wig was a major deal; we would have to pull everything out of the way to get the makeup person in there, and then bring everything back. Everything was just harder. You would think it would be easier because you just have to manipulate the puppets, but you’ve got a bunch of strings and a guy working remotely, above or below, who’s not really able to see the puppet except on a monitor. It was much more difficult to get a performance out of them.”

In addressing some of these issues, Pope worked closely with production designer Jim Dultz to help build in as much accessibility to the puppets as possible, and also to integrate architectural lighting into the set’s designs. “I spent a large part of the prep period working with Jim to figure out how we could light our small-scale sets,” Pope explains. “One of the first things I usually say to a production designer is that I much prefer a set that lights itself over a set that I have to light artificially. So we thought a lot about the lighting of the sets as he designed them. He loved being able to show off the patterns of his architecture with the built-in lighting.

“Still, we also had to work out how to leave the middle of the sets open so the puppeteers could get in there. All of the sets we built up on 4-foot tall platforms so that our puppeteers could get underneath and do rod-puppet work. For example, if we were on an exterior set, our sky backdrop was separated from the background; you could then get lights down below, which would also help light the sky. Because we were on platforms, we could always open up a section, cut a hole in a floor, and so on. If we wanted up-light on something, we could just slice a hole in the floor to accommodate the fixture.”