“I felt like people were watching me, thinking, ‘What’s he doing? What’s he up to?’ But when I looked at the photo in the camera screen and I saw the result, it was just pure excitement. I felt like I had something, and it was something I hadn’t seen anyone else do.”
Now, companies fly him around the world to create new cutouts, and cities become playgrounds full of creativity and opportunity. Burt remembers one trip to Japan.
“Rich saw a building and said, ‘Oh, I could turn that into a penguin’. I mean, I’m not being funny, I don’t walk around looking at buildings thinking, ‘Oh, that could be a penguin’,” he laughs.
Another memorable trip for McCor was Easter Island, a location he admits was on his “Bucket List”. He turned the famous stone statues into a table football team.
Then it was off to Budapest, in Hungary, where he was given the chance to work with actor Will Smith, who was shooting Gemini Man in the city.
“I was very nervous about meeting him,” McCor remembers, “but he was really friendly and chatty.
“I had an idea that Will Smith would be running away from a paper cut-out doppelganger that would be shooting at him. It turned out to be one of the most successful pieces I’ve ever posted on Instagram. Will put it on his Instagram page as well and my audience grew a lot. That was definitely the biggest project I’ve done so far.”
In 2018 McCor released a book of his work, entitled Around the World in Cut Outs.
At the moment, McCor is currently working with Microsoft on a co-curated content series called “Beneath the Surface” which explores the barriers Brits face when it comes to pursuing their passions and turning their ideas into a reality. This follows research from Microsoft that revealed that almost half of all Brits may never pursue their passion due to a “lack of creative skills”.
Beneath the Surface is brought to life via a series of IGTV episodes which sees McCor meet a range of everyday Brits who also see the world a little bit differently. The series is designed to inspire Brits to look at the world with a fresh lens and pursue new passions and interests regardless of whether they consider themselves to be “creative” or not.