with the chairman-CEO Michael Lynton, who grew up watching The Smurfs in the Netherlands. Kerner explained, "He relished them as I do and suggested that it should be a live-action/CG film. Amy Pascal felt equally that there was potentially a series of films in the making". Shrek 2 writers, J. David Stem and David N. Weiss wrote the screenplay along with Zookeeper writers Jay Scherick and David Ronn; Stem and Weiss also wrote the story. Raja Gosnell directed. Quentin Tarantino was in talks to play Brainy Smurf, however, these did not pan out. Filming and animation On a budget of $110 million, principal photography began in New York City on March 26, 2010. In May, scenes were filmed in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood. That month, scenes were shot all night for five nights in a row at F.A.O. Schwartz toy store. Production was temporarily halted after a worker fell 30 feet from a set at the toy store on Fifth Avenue and 58th Street; he later recovered in a hospital. Other locations used for filming were Belvedere Castle, the Russian Tea Room, Rockefeller Center, and Brooklyn's Prospect Park. A two-thirds-scale replica of the Belvedere Castle was built with wooden grates as floors (to create additional contrast). Gargamel's dungeon under the Belvedere Castle, which included the "Smurfalator", was built on a soundstage. It took three months to build because some parts were hard to come by. Production eventually found the rare parts at garage sales, flea markets, on eBay and Craigslist. In order to help the Smurfs' animators during post-production, cinematographer Phil Meheux and his team would light up a scene where the Smurfs would be digitally added using 7 and one half-inch tall models to stand in during set-up and rehearsals. He explained, "We can then position the light so that it falls right. The actors know where the Smurf will be when it is animated later, so their eyelines will match. Then we can take out the model and shoot the scene, and they look quite real, fitting the real backing that we're giving them. It looks like they're part of the surroundings". Also during the process the Imageworks visual effects team used a new camera system to precisely record the on-set lighting, so it could be applied later in the computer. When time came to film a scene that would include actors and Smurfs, each Smurf was represented by