3-Apr-16 – Special effects magic collided with news photography at the intersection of North Dearborn Street and West Lake Street in the Loop last Wednesday morning.

A photojournalist for Chicago Tribune says he was assaulted and cursed at by a crew that was doing a photo shoot for Adidas. The photo shoot required snow in 54-degree weather and so what nature could not provide, a special effects team did, using ice and bubbles. It created an odd scene at the intersection, with pedestrians stepping through the only patches of snow anywhere in the Loop.

Anthony Souffle says one crew member grabbed his camera and tried to block him from capturing photos of a model wearing the shoes. Another sprayed him with fake snow and threatened to do more. Another pointed a studio flash, at the end of a pole, and “blasted the flash” in his face. Others shouted obscenities at him and, says Souffle, “told me I was disgusting.”

“All of this for trying to do what countless other folks around me were doing with their phones,” wrote Souffle (left) in an account of the incident published in the Tribune on Wednesday afternoon. “Sometimes the hardest part of being a photographer is looking too much like one.”

The location scout for the photo shoot says the claims are “inflated.”

Kate Levinson, who was with the crew, says they had been up all night and were trying to get some last shots of their model before going home. They noticed Souffle photographing from across the street but “nobody really cared” for the first five minutes.

Then the crew started wondering, “who is that guy with the real camera and big lenses, photographing us?”

An Adidas representative named Julian walked across the street to speak with Souffle.

“I was watching from my side of the street,” Levinson (right) told Loop North News on Friday. “And I was noticing – just the body language, obviously I couldn’t hear what they were saying – but Julian was talking to this guy and the guy wasn’t even looking at him. He was just looking straight through his camera, focusing and zooming and whatever. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty rude, somebody goes to talk you, to not even look at him.”

She says the Adidas representative probably just asked Souffle not to focus on the shoes, as they had not yet been introduced to the public.

“So then Julian comes back over and the next thing I know, the photographer…was in our set. He had come over to our side of street and he had his camera literally in our set.”

According to Levinson, a photo assistant did try to block the Tribune photographer’s shots by holding up a silk light reflector. “He was so invasive, and so then when our producer went over to talk to him, he was getting very elevated, with ‘I have a right to be here. You’re on public property.’” That’s when the producer put her hand up in front of Souffle’s lens but, says Levinson, “she absolutely did not grab his camera.” (Left) This photo by Bill Edlebeck shows the Adidas photographer and model at the fake-snow-and-slush-filled corner.

As for Souffle’s claim that he was sprayed with fake snow, Levinson says it was just foam bubbles. A large snow machine had been there earlier but was “long gone” by the time Souffle got there.

Levinson herself went to talk to Souffle but says “he was being so obstinate, I just let our police officer talk with him.”

Whatever the officer, who had been with the crew the entire night, said, it convinced Souffle he had the shots he needed, but his account of the incident, says Levinson, “created something out of nothing.”

“Nobody was yelling obscenities at him, but they were certainly, like, what is this guy’s problem? It’s like the paparazzi are here. He was being invasive. He was photographing people who were getting uncomfortable with him photographing them.”

Levinson says she “had a conversation” with Adidas about the incident and says she will contact the Chicago Film Office, which politely declined comment for this story.

Fake snow comes from trucks and backpacks

The snow, explains Levinson, came from a semi-trailer truck loaded with 300-pound blocks of ice. On the back of the truck “is basically an enormous snow cone machine” that turns the ice into snow that is then sprayed throughout the street.

(Right) A “snowmaker truck” belonging to a business in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, provides simulated snow for the 2011 film, Contagion.

To get the illusion of snow falling, Levinson says crewmembers stand just outside of camera frame with backpacks that produce blowing soap suds.

“It looks like Ghostbusters.”

Levinson, whose scouting business has found photo locations for Mercedes and Cadillac, says the incident during the Adidas shoot “wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Hopefully, it’s good for Adidas – they get a little buzz about their shoe.”