Hello,
I just realized I feel like I'm writing an email blog.
This past week has been productive. The spinner works! It was difficult. The invisible thread arrived. I was disappointed because it looked thick and furry. Then I realized that you're supposed to unravel the thread and use the individual tiny threads. Yes they are invisible. You cannot see the thread even from inches way. The thread is brittle and is extremely hard to use.
Half the time I have to take it by faith that i'm actually holding the thread. It was so tough to work with that I went to Joannes and bought a spool of "invisible thread" to use as a replacement. It's like thin dark fish line, but it still shows up on video! It would have been OK if it didn't move, but the movement is a dead giveaway. So I summoned up my courage, went back to the magician's invisible thread and got it to work. By the way, if you ever need some, just go to a store and pick up "wooly nylon." After ordering it from Penguin Magic, I found it's the basically the same thing. I give credit to the magicians who use it. In fact, it's more magical to me that they can control the invisible thread without breaking it than doing the actual levitation itself.
At any rate, the workshop set is finally complete. Ready for shooting.
Krissy and I painted the two rooms. The green room ended up being a grayish blue. The red room was difficult to paint. Halfway through, I found out I was supposed to prime the wall.I didn't which is why I had to use so many coats. Anyway, the red is quite beautiful, the paint job is lousy, but we concentrated on the part that will be seen. (The rest of the room will only be seen when the camera flies around Ben).
The gray/blue room should be easy to dress. The red room will be somewhat harder. I've been making a collage on my closet door of various papers. I got a lot of great stuff from collage supply outlets (eg. mantofev.com). I also have some vintage mcdonalds and cake ads arriving via the mail (Ebay). The hard thing about this is the scale--filling up the space with energy.
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I am so far really liking this way of making the film. It's slow and drawn out and the line between pre/post/production is also blurred. So I've been able to think through things. There's a kind of understanding that comes only from longitudinal time I believe.
Some things I've been thinking about:
>Firmed up the introductory scene. This was not previsualized. It was the scene that was going to show closeups of the spinner and Ben's physics books. I realized there needs to be a magical momenet where we are very tight. Ben releases the spinner into the air and then it starts spinning/floating. Cue the spinner music. There is lots of detail in the workshop set so closeups should look nice.
> I realized that the driving scene from the graveyard to the church/lilbrary is not necessary. I'm not sure why I put it there in the first place, but I realize that it's important for the church to be geographically and chronologically ambiguous. maybe it's actually in Europe. Who knows? But there needs to be ambiguity.
>Ben and his wife-originally still images. Should probably be more like home videos. Since moving away from the changing-photos machine idea, we might as well go full motion. It will add a nice and different visual texture.
>I got the Russian Vostok model, which is quite beautiful. It was going to be the satellite in the ending scene. I'm now wondering if It's better not to show the satellite at all?? Remember, we want to keep it ambiguous as to whether Ben is really being pursued or whether this is all his vain imagining.
That's it for now.
I believe Dan is back from Stuttgart where he was doing a MAX sound program for a dance group there.
Ron
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