The year has absolutely flown by and a blog update is long past due! Good blogging intentions lost out to day jobs, studio and commercial deadlines, family, and travel. No excuses, just fact. But, where exactly did the time go?
Truth be told I can’t remember what the heck we had going on at the start of 2012, other than a continuation of projects from 2011. Lori had begun constructing the set for the Subway image the later part of 2011. It was a large set, necessary to include details like the striped wall covering –shiny/matte striped aluminum. Lori painstakingly layed out, taped off, and then used sandpaper to create the matte stripes. The seats were carved foam, coated in spackle, then painted. Aluminum rod acted as center poles and was bent to become handrails.
Lori has long been fascinated by the walking sand dunes of Namibia. That is what led to us dragging 300lbs of sand up to our apartment. How much did we actually use to create the sand filled interior of the subway car? A wee fraction. But you never know. If we’d just picked up a little bit of sand initially, we would inevitably had to go buy more. It was entirely a fluke that Hurricane Sandy hit in late October, just a few weeks after the scene was completed. All told we worked on Subway for about a year, off and on.
Part of the “off” time was the opportunity to work with our Four Story Treehouse buddies (Joe and Vincent) again on a short video for the new BBC America series, Coppers. This was the first original programming by the American wing of BBC and the idea was to create a video that would bring viewers up to speed historically with what was happening in the Five Points area of New York City in the 1860’s. It was decided to focus on the draft riot and its’ effect on the country, highlighting the anger it created between the different classes and ethnic groups.
With little time to do research and build the sets, about 1-1/2 months, we got to work. We planned some specific camera shots, knowing basically what would be needed to tell the story. Lori and I have also learned that there is a lot of improvisation on set, and do our best to offer a variety of possibilities. You can check out the finished product on the Four Story Treehouse website - www.fourstorytreehouse.com .
