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98F-8 | ||
| A few weeks ago, Kalle called. "I have the equipment all lined up and ready to go." His notice wasn't quite far enough in advance, as I was in Tehachapi at the time. I figured the project would fail completely, but he called again. The tide wasn't anything like being good, but it was his last chance. I'm enough of a ham to do it anyway; we'll deal with the sand as it comes. |
| Build number: | 98F-8 (lifetime start #135) |
| Date: | May 10 |
| Location: | Venice Breakwater, on the flat |
| Start: | 0930; building time: 6 hours |
| Height: | 3.6 feet |
| Base: | 1.75 feet, cylindric |
| Photography: | rest of color neg w/XA2; first half E100S w/LX; 2 TMX 120 w/P6X7 |
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I'd had time to think about how I handled the Japanese videotaping, and concluded that I screwed it up badly. By concentrating completely on getting the sculpture off, I made their job harder. It was up to them to make a show, and who knows how they'd do it. This time, I decided to work with Kalle and think about what I wanted in the tape.
Conditions were far from favorable. I compensated by making a short sculpture with sand available right at the building site. At least we could build on the flat, which made videography easier and always provides a nice stage.
In strong contrast with the NHK production team, Kalle had to do everything himself. Sound, lights, moving the camera, setting up shots. We strapped the microphone to his camcorder with one of my load handling straps. We had to time shots because the camera was too heavy to hold for very long. In short, he worked very hard. I also worked, thinking about what I'd want to see in a video. I demonstrated various aspects of sculpting as I did them; if Kalle liked the idea, we'd run through it again and let him get a different angle. If you're going to make a video, you might as well do it well. Kalle made it fairly easy, by being cooperative and open to suggestions. The day was lovely, with big fluffy clouds streaming over the mountains on a cool breeze. Work went swiftly; the coarse sand called for a strong and fairly simple sculpture. It started with a big strongly convex element that arched over the top. I tunnelled through under the arch and Kalle taped the process of polishing the space. Around from that I tried some more intricate pieces, but the sand wouldn't permit much and I wanted this one to stand. Relative simplicity led to early completion. Kalle made his final shots and went home to work on editing. He had only a few days. A week later Kalle was headed for Seattle, but had left a tape behind. "Hands in the Sand," nine minutes long, was beautifully done. He'd wrought well with the footage, making a show that flowed well and illustrated subtleties of sculpting I didn't expect him to understand. The collaboration worked well; I wonder what he could do with better technical support. | ||||||||||
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Original: 98-November-30 (direct to HTML)
All contents copyright 1999 by
Larry Nelson Process photography by Rich Johnson | ||||||||||
98f08rpt.htm 99 January 9
