It’s a bit embarrassing for me to notice that I haven’t posted in my blog since the end of July, but in any case, here we are at the beginning of 2012. At the threshold of a brand new year, it’s my habit to have a look back at the year that was and look forward at the year to come.
2011 was a big one for me. I learned a lot of new things and worked with many fantastic people. This was the year I took my first serious steps into the world of video production. This year, I plan to continue that work to expand my high definition video capabilities and skills. I also plan to revisit music production, something that my passionate hobby over 20 years ago. I find that my work with the amazing Laura Hollick, who is my partner in so many ways, has allowed me to dovetail all of my creative pursuits and give them direction, purpose and outlet.
Finally, I’d like to present a video collage showing some of the results of some of the many photo shoots that I did during 2011. It was great fun sorting through my archive to pull out these images. Just like last year, I want to thank everyone who entrusted me with the task of capturing a lasting image. I’m looking forward to working with you all again soon!
My shoot with Laura Hollick the other evening was a multi-purpose one. We were aiming to get three things out of this evening’s shoot: a video, a “magazine cover” photo and a more artistic photo. Sue Upton did a great job with hair and makeup, transforming Laura into the field fairy.
We shot all of this at “Golden Hour,” which is that magical period just before sunset when everything looks like a fairy tale. Unfortunately, because of cloud cover, golden hour didn’t materialize in quite the striking way it usually does at this time of year. However, it was still a good time to shoot. When it’s a little overcast, the brightness of foreground and sky are close enough at this time of day so you can get some nice sky details in your backgrounds rather than boring white.
The video is a visual poem. It was fun shooting this, because it really challenged me to find new and interesting ways to frame shots and move the camera. This was the first attempt at using our new Blackbird DSLR camera stabilizer. It was a challenging test. The Blackbird has a piece that dangles down beneath the camera. That piece has a crossbar on it. While moving through the field, the crossbar would constantly touch or impact on grasses and other plants, often making the shots waver unpredictably. In the end, because we didn’t need a lot of footage, it wasn’t a problem. However, my arm was so numb after holding this stabilized rig steady for about an hour, I could barely operate the camera for the regular photos! Using this thing regularly is going to make my left bicep humongous.
Admittedly, I’m relatively new at shooting and editing video, but today’s tools make both so easy and intuitive. It wasn’t hard to get a result that we were both happy with.
Millions of tiny dramas are happening every day in New York City. Turn your lens in any direction, focus on even the smallest fragment, and you’re bound to capture them.
Shot with Canon 5D MkII with Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator. You can view it in HD on Youtube.
As you might know, Laura Hollick and I recently created a stop-motion film. It was my first-ever stop motion film, not including the little flip books of the stick man running that I used to make when I was a kid. Those used to drive my mom nuts, because she’d have all kinds of mostly-unused notebooks with frayed corners and little stick men in various poses at the bottom of each page. Anyway, if you haven’t seen our film yet, have a look. It’s called The Beginning.
It was Laura’s idea to create this film, to show feathers of multiple colors migrating to eventually return home as part of her rainbow feather dress. We didn’t know exactly where the feathers were going to start their journey, or how they were going to get where they were going, or what it was all going to look like, but that’s really the fun of creating something like this. The possibilities are almost endless. We hiked up to The Peak, which has a spectacular view overlooking the Dundas Valley, and talked for hours about how it might be done. We didn’t really come to any conclusions though. When we got up to leave, I saw a very interesting outcropping of rock on the edge of a cliff, just to the side of The Peak. It was entirely surrounded by lush, green vegetation. “Can you get over there?” I asked Laura.
“Yes,” she said.
“We need to put the rainbow bird on the edge of that cliff.”
“YES!”
Finally, we knew where the feathers were going to go. They were going to make a journey from their artistic origins, through the city, and into the forest, finally ending up at home as part of the rainbow bird, perched on the edge of this spectacular cliff. We were pumped.
It would have been quite possible to create enough scenes to make a feature-length film about our feather friends. We had so many ideas about where they could come from and where they could go. We only had a few days to create this film, and I knew it was going to take a lot of time to do, so our first step in organizing all of these ideas was to create some simple sketches and select only our favorites to shoot. Here are a couple of Laura’s sketches. You might recognize the genesis of the Red Feather in these outlines, as well as a list of our “characters.”
The next step was to find the actual locations for shooting. We looked near and far, and drove around the city, finding possible spots to shoot. I snapped some quick frames to get an idea for composition so that we could create a storyboard that made visual sense. Here are the snapshots we used to compose the Red Feather scene.
With some of the initial planning done, we were ready to start shooting the next day. We didn’t stop for the next four days. I was shooting constantly, and when I wasn’t shooting, I was processing the photos and assembling them into stop-motion video clips. We shot the feather scenes at Laura’s studio, Laura’s parents’ home, my own studio, and outdoors at the beautiful Tews Falls Conservation Area, whose shady forest paths lead up to The Peak. Here’s a video of me working with Lissa Hill, who did a great job assisting us in hauling camera gear and costume materials, and animating the feathers up on The Peak. She kept her cool, even though it was often frustrating to work with our lightweight actors in very windy conditions.
In the end, I’d shot about 1500 photos and processed them to 1080i high definition stop-motion clips of each scene. Some scenes ended up on the digital cutting-room floor. There’s this scene, for instance, that didn’t make it into the film. We shot it as an alternate beginning for the Blue Feather’s journey, just in case the weather didn’t co-operate with our plans to shoot Blue crying out of the graffiti wall.
After assembling all of the stop-motion clips into their proper sequence, I auditioned a number of different musical tracks. I settled on Under the Kadam Tree from Stockmusic.com. It is one of those rare stock music pieces that doesn’t sound like stock music. I thought the slightly mystical feel created by the tabla and sitar instrumentation, combined with a sort of unexpected jaunty tempo really lent itself well to the mood we were trying to create in the film.
The last step was to create the credits. This was the only segment shot at my studio using studio light. The rest had all been done using natural light, to keep the feel and color as consistent as possible. I designed the credits in PowerPoint and printed them out on cream-colored textured paper. When Laura saw that I’d created one that said “The End,” she was slightly appalled. “It’s not the end,” she said, “It’s the beginning.” Of course, she was exactly right. I quickly replaced that slide with a new one that was more appropriate, and in the end, we found our beginning.
It’s funny. For the last few months, I’ve been thinking of times and dates in terms of pre- and post-Birth Your Dreams Exhibition Opening. The big night finally came on Friday, and it was time to see if all of our hard work would pay off. We were so pleased by the turnout to the reception. Our exhibition drew the biggest crowd in the Carnegie gallery’s 30-year history, and the room was just buzzing with positive vibes. All in all, it was a very satisfying night, and a great launch for the exhibition, which runs until August 30. Here’s a little video we made from some of the footage collected by our good friends Sabrina and Emily.
