Throughout January, Abbott Imaging moved to a bigger studio one floor up. As they prepared the new space and moved their tools and equipment up there, the old studio emptied out except for the Into the Ovoid project. In the last days of January, all that was left in the room were the lights, cameras, and a worktable at which I was filmed making pysanky.
In February, we continued working on the film in the new studio. We scheduled as many studio sessions as we could despite Boston’s epic blizzards and bitter cold. Here’s my driveway on a morning when we clearly had to cancel.
We got a lot of cool stuff done in February. For example, in a couple of scenes I wanted the camera to be able to pan over the surface of a spinning egg. To get this effect we came up with another rig, this time involving a disassembled wheelchair. We mounted the video camera on a board spanning form one wheel rim to the other, and by turning the coupled wheels, we could pan the spinning eggs we suspended in front of the camera. For a steady spin, we used a disco ball spinner mounted on — what else? — a microphone stand. Here’s what it looked like when we used our trusty lampshade frame to spin a ring formation of eggs.
The curve of key green paper you see taped along a section of the rims is conveniently always across from the camera lens. Key green is a color the videographers can easily remove during editing so only the eggs are visible against any background we insert using the editing software.
Yesterday was a big day; we finished shooting all the images and video for the film. We now have over 36,000 files containing almost 320 GB of data. In the next 4 weeks, Abbott Imaging will continue editing, animating, and rendering all this material into a movie. We also hope to continue pulling together an original soundtrack of improvisation by some talented musicians. It seems fitting to record a live musical accompaniment for this otherwise silent film.
And at the end of the month, we’re on track to have the premiere screening:
The event is free and open to the public. Limited free parking is available in an adjacent lot, and metered parking is available on Vassar street. If you are in the area, please join us. If you’re not local, stay tuned. We may screen the film in other cities. We will definitely be getting DVDs made and will post the film for online viewing in April.