Project5: Vaporize

Subject: McKenna Birmingham

Project5 Time: 8hrs

Project52 Time: 31hrs

Ok... I know... this is late. I've addressed it and now we can move forward. I'm realizing that as my year goes on and my schedule fills up that Project52 isn't the easiest task. Surprisingly it's not the filming and editing that is hard to find time for. It's the consistently updating and promoting the project that gets pushed under the table. But I'm doing it now to catch up! So here it is:

This is one of my favorite projects to date. I decided to shoot my former-roommate, Juilliard classmate, and long time friend, McKenna Birmingham. She's a really wonderful mover and has such an eye for film. She helped me a lot, not only by dancing, but also with ideas of different angles to shoot from and ways to pull off some of the "magic" with the balloons. So this is a HUGE "Thank You, McKenna!"

I had wanted to do this idea of the balloons leading someone around for a while and finally felt it was the right time and place to do it. I had a vision of someone leaving this life, but not necessarily in a morbid, sad, woe-is-me, dramatic way. I felt like the balloons allow the viewer to instantly associate the film with a happy or nostalgic thought, so what better than to use it as a guide to a more serious inevitable event? I didn't want to give death, in this case, a negative connotation so I tried to make it a more surreal, or even spiritual occurrence in this subject's life. 

I let McKenna be pretty free with the movement and asked her to just move where the balloons took her. We had many shots that didn't end up in the Project because the balloons would get so tangled from the wind that I would have to jump in the frame to save McKenna from being strangled. I think she and I both found it much more difficult to film than we had anticipated. Overall, it took us around 4.5hrs to shoot the entire film.

Editing this one was fairly easy since there was a clear narrative for me to work with. I really had no challenges with this one, other than to figure out what music I wanted to pair it with. I took me around 3.5hrs, some Indian food, and two glasses of Whiskey to edit Project5! ;)

Enjoy!