Interview: Mr. Jones Producer Ross Dinerstein

Ross was a pleasure to work with and I owe him big time for these super kind words...

Q: You used scarecrow expert Pumpkinrot to make the 18 custom-designed scarecrows for the film. What was the process of using Pumpkinrot like for the movie, and what was your overall impression of the final scarecrows?
RD: Karl scoured the Internet, trying to find a scarecrow expert. We felt that in order for the movie to work, we would need unbelievable scarecrows, who were characters in their own way. We used tracking boards and chat rooms, and we kept hearing the same name, Pumpkinrot.
So Karl tracked him down on Facebook and got on the phone with him. I also got on the phone with him, and we started having this conversation with him. He's this artist in Pennsylvania, who's the best of the best at building scarecrows. He had some bad experiences with Hollywood before. But after getting to know Karl and speaking to me, he said he would do it.
The next thing you know, he took a month off of his regular job and started building these scarecrows. He sent us pictures, and they arrived two days before production, and we were blown away. The reactions the characters had to the scarecrows for the first time were the same exact reactions we had for the first time.
 
Q: Where you worried at all about how the scarecrows would turn out, since he was in Pennsylvania and you shot the film in California?
RD: We weren't worried because he really understood the script. He had sent us pictures of the progress, so we were never concerned and had a lot of faith in him.
 
Q: What was the process of getting the scarecrows and the rest of the props into the underground, abandoned mineshaft where Jon was filming his scenes on his own?
RD: That was a happy accident. The location that we found where we shot the majority of the movie happened to have these old salt mines right next door. The owner of the property where we were shooting also owned that property next door, and he let us shoot there. It was a scary, claustrophobic place, but we just carried stuff down there and back up. The actors spent an entire night shooting down there, but they never complained. It added so much to the movie.
We had caverns in the script, but we never knew how we were going to address it. So we got very lucky on that.

The full interview here.