It's not the notes it's where you put them

The accidental fake slow-mo shot.

Shot more light-streaming-through-the-window, color-balanced-to-look-like-sunset shots on Saturday night with Ben. One of the problems with the master was with Ben sitting down. There must be something out there that talks about how to direct people to sit. It just didn't look right. It might be the actual sitting or more likely, the lack of motivation to sit down on a mark. One of the shots I like came about accidentally. Ben was looking out the window but the spinner was spinning very slowly. I shot it anyway. It looks like a bonafide high frame rate slow motion shot. Until Ben blinks. BTW, for the first time I've been bemoaning the lack of true slow motion. I really want to see the tiny stars bounce on the table. But the usual technique of slowing down in post doesn't work for tiny images like the crystals. All you get are streaks and blurs.

I have the first four minutes of the video cut together. I wasn't sure how to time the cut so I did my usual strategy of throwing in a sound track. I used Anna and the King which I had left over from my wedding. It's interesting to see how romantic it made everything seem; the beginning really looks like a chick flick, especially because now the portrait of Gracie is in there. During the part where Ben is looking at the crystal stars the music takes on a pretty, wistful mood. It occurred to me that what makes a good sound track is not necessarily the notes, but where you put them. Sound tracks are a kind of audio grammar that use a similar vocabulary. There's always the suspenseful high-strings cue, the moody tinkly cue, the action cue with big percussion. What made the stars segment nice was the way it underscored the video in a slightly unexpected way. The music itself wasn't that interesting but the way it interpreted the scene was. And it gave me the idea that somehow the stars should be moving. We should linger on them for a bit.


Ben calls this the "it's so Tim Burton shot." That's because Tim Burton put Johnny Depp in binocular glasses ONCE in Sleep Hollow. These $10 binocular glasses came from Ebay. I painted the logo over. They are obviously helping Ben do something very important.