This was a very special collaborative project. My friend Pat put out an album called Those Wild Days with his friend J.R. Kaufman. He wanted to create some small miniature vignettes to go with each song. At that point in time, I was in the process of selling my family home. This attic garage space housed the dwindling remains of my Dad’s library. I transformed it into a shooting stage for this project. It was all very hodge-podgy, which made it quite delightful. Pat had a dreamy vision for every vignette, and I collected any objects that might be useful or inspiring. We had prismatic lens, miniature plants, lots of random fabric and all sorts of various knick knacks. If he had specific props in mind, I made them using whatever abandon art supplies I had around from college that were still in the garage. We tried to do one scene every day, for a 10 day shoot (If I recall correctly).
In the morning or the night before, I’d do a rough set up and capture a frame as a starting place. Then Pat would arrive and we’d spend the rest of the day adjusting and tweaking the sets together, trying to find the right look. Pat would digitally finish the images, to further push them towards what he had in mind. Below is the entire album with all the illustrations included. All the beautiful puppets were made by Erin Paisley.
Here are a few pictures of the studio before we got started. My nephew helped me dismantle this old kitchen table to become our animation table. He was a great prop assist… except when he wanted to pull the books off the shelves. I’ve included a few pictures of the space “before” it was converted to a studio… it’s hard to express how much work it was to empty my Dad’s house. It’s good to have these reminders. This was January.. my Dad had passed away the end of June.
This project with Pat was a beautiful and creative intermission, following 6 months of isolated cleaning, organizing and processing. There would be 6 more months before the house listed for sale. (The main house was still far from complete) I was grateful for the chance to reconnect to art and friendship after so much work and solitude.
Below are some process photos of some of my favorite vignettes. The first image of every batch will always be the Final Director’s edit - how it appeared after Pat’s editing. Any following shots will show interim versions. A lot of the blur effects Pat was capturing in camera. It was fun to play with lights and special effects.
I really liked this one. I created a special contraption that suspended an angled piece of glass behind the set. Then I taped this iridescent ruffle fabric, hoping the edges would read as waves. I was also very excited to recreate that sunset sparkling diamond effect on the water. My ripple test was interesting, but only semi-successful. Needed refinement. I also wish the “clouds” weren’t so droopy over the sun, but overall, it’s still one of my favorite images.
This vignette was inspired by theatrical cloud effects, like the one’s in Terry Gilliam’s the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I cut acrylic shapes and then sanded them to create various opacities.
This one had a lot of lovely props; some framed art I whipped up, a lot of dollhouse furniture, and a big window I made from paper. In some of my mockups, I decided to make our heroine a frog (provided and created by Erin)
Here are a few more candids from the project. I won’t go through every vignette, but it was so fun to experiment and play with miniatures again. When I look back, I can hardly believe it all happened. Now, that home I grew up in belongs to a new family. I’m so grateful I could do this special project before I had to say goodbye.
