Quote:
Originally posted by snowywhite
Floyd is the best!
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wow, this thread is still alive?!:1orglaugh
http://images.art.com/images/PRODUCT...0/10086088.jpg
Legendary band Pink Floyd used the image of Battersea Power Station for their album 'Animals' ... with a flying pig hovering above its chimneys.
The legendary inflatable Floyd pig was conceived by Roger Waters and originally designed by ERG of Amsterdam in December 1976 for the photo session at Battersea Power Station which spawned the "Animals" album cover.
Roger suggested flying a large inflatable pig from the towers of Battersea Power Station. He wanted to do it for real...no photo trickery. Although the image of a pig suspended between the huge chimneys possessed a great sense of mood it was the pig itself which caught the headlines.
The day of the shoot was fantastic with a dramatic sky. First, the 40 ft. pig was inflated, but this took so long that it was not actually launched all day. The group of 11 photographers and 3 film crews stood around all day. The manager, with clever foresight, had hired a marksman with telescopic rifle to shoot down the pig if it escaped its mooring ropes and sailed off into the sky, where it would become an insurance risk. On the second day, the manager, with not quite such clever foresight, had decided to not hire the marksman for the day, for economic reasons.
The pig ascended into the flight paths of incoming jets landing at Heathrow Airport. The first sighting came from a jet pilot who landed at Heathrow, a police helicopter was sent up and sighted the pig over London. It tracked it to a height of 5,000 feet before having to return to base.
The Civil Aviation Authorities then took over and a general alert was sent out to all pilots that a 40 foot long, pink flying pig was on the loose in the airspace over the capital! The CAA lost radar contact with it at a point east of Detling, near Chatham in Kent, flying at a height of 18,000 feet and heading east towards Germany.
The pig, with a mind of its own, floated along on into Kent and descended upon a rural farmers property. One can imagine the disbelief of his wife when the farmer said to her "guess what..."
The Pink Floyd office at first slapped an embargo on information concerning the pig and then admitted that they weren't even sure that they had enough pictures of it for the album.
The roadies rescued the pig from the farmer that night, returned it to London, mended the punctures and put the pig up again so that it could be photographed the next day.
The day was cloudless, with a bright blue sky, but it was not very striking...therefore the pig was layered into the final artwork from day three into the sky of day one, which is how it could have been done in the first place.
While a different technique could have been employed to save time, money and anxiety, it also would have prevented a great story unfolding and good laugh being had by all.
