We are meeting ostrich experts because the ostriches we will use in the film need a lot of research. Ostriches are beautiful but very stupid animals. We have a meeting with the owner of a show-farm who has a tamed female. And a scientist who researches the ostrich.
We find out that you hardly can tame ostriches. Their brains are smaller then their eyeballs. They forget as fast as they learn. They primarily have their instinct. They eat, mate, protect and are monogamous. And all of this with a lot of passion. They can kill a man with one kick. Their huge nail will rip open the chest. If you ever get attacked by an ostrich quickly lay down on your stomach and wait. Ostriches don’t eat meat. So the bird will sit down on you with his 150 kilos. Pretend you’re dead. Soon the bird will get bored and walks away. Ostriches are curious, nervous and afraid of everything that is taller then they are, like microphones or lamps. They run away easily. And if they run, they really RUN! At night we talk about all the possibilities of working with the birds. The plan is that we will use real birds. But we need to find a trainer. We will use fake birds as well, birds that we can manoeuvre; it’s called “animatronics”. But because many shots have human interacting with the birds, we will have to use 3D-computer animation as well.