items such as these frozen fish patties are relatively easy to freeze into an ice block. One of these guys starred in the Popeyes commercial. But I have no idea which 🤷♂️
updated 9/4/23. Pics were sadly missing, so I fixed that. Also working on my bad writing and added some links, formatting, and seo.
Popeyes commercial on the bayou
In contrast to the rather complicated freeze-in process for the flowers and ice luge tubing in the last entry, it was easy to freeze a few fish patties into a block for use in a Popeyes commercial that was shot in Lafitte, LA. After harvesting, I cut the block into three smaller blocks, each containing a fish patty.
In a Clinebell-type ice block machine, the ice forms from the bottom of the tank, up to the surface. So in order to get the fish patties to stay in place, I weighed each patty down with a heavy plumbing part. Once the ice formed up around the edges of the patties and trapped them in place, I removed the galvanized steel pipe caps so that they wouldn’t also be encased in ice. After that, the freezing was allowed to continue until the block was ready for harvest.
my fish patty ice block, ready for its closeup in the Popeyes commercial
In hindsight, a couple of problems could have been addressed. First, the patties were breaded and it turned out that a little of the breading came free from the patties while they were immersed in cold water during the freezing process. The breading had a tendency to end up in the nearby ice, diminishing the final presentation somewhat. Perhaps I could have sprayed a water-resistant clearcoat on the patties (since they would never be eaten) so that the breading would stay put.
Another solution would be to insert a patty into fully formed ice by taking two flat pieces of ice, cutting out a pocket in one for a patty, then freezing the pieces together with the patty inside. I actually did this as an alternative, but the director of the commercial decided that the Clinebell-machine-frozen patties were better for their purposes. But you should know that the point of the commercial was to say that Popeyes food was better than a frozen fish patty. So, in this case, it wasn’t all bad that there were imperfections in the freezing.
the lead actor for the Popeyes commercial, with a couple of stunt doubles, just in case
The other minor fix would have been to make sure that all three patties were in the exact same placement and orientation in the small ice blocks. I was playing around with different presentations, so the three small block each had their patty at a slightly different angle. Well, when it came time to shoot the commercial, that meant that only one of the three small blocks could be used. Otherwise, the patty position would change from shot to shot. Again, this was fine, because it was okay that the ice was taking a beating from a little sunlight. It wasn’t enough to make a noticeable difference.
Finally, it turned out that they needed a few extra people in the background of the Popeyes commercial, so I ended up being in the shots. You’ll see me right away, possibly about to fall off the boat in the middle of the shot, in the background. After that initial bit, you can see my hand too 😜 By the way, it’s a little humbling to be upstaged by a 40 lb. chunk of frozen water. You can see below how I was dressed up as a shrimper for the shot. Not convincingly, but it was still fun!
I still have the shrimper boots from the Popeyes commercial. Wardrobe dirtied them up a bit for the commercial so they wouldn’t look brand new. Shame they couldn’t fix how I looked 
links and stuff
At some point, I’ll collect all of my movie and tv stuff on one page, mainly just to keep things straight. But I haven’t done that yet, so no link for that so far.
You could also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. You can comment there, since I probably haven’t yet gotten the comments to work for older post yet 😬
