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“The video has been a great asset to our business. We have many guests who talk to us as if they already know us. Many say the video is the reason they are choosing Prufrocks. If callers haven’t seen it we regularly refer them and often get a second call with a reservation.”
-Jim Halvorsen, innkeeper of Prufrocks Garden Inn by the Beach
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Hand Thrown: The East Asian Wedged Coil Technique” is an instructional film we recently made for Joyce Michaud, potter and educator at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Joyce has spent her life rigorously learning and teaching the physical properties of clay as a necessary adjunct to the more intuitive process of creation, and this very thorough nuts-and-bolts film has been much-anticipated by potters who appreciate the method’s utility and want the opportunity to re-wind Joyce’s expert moves like only dvds will allow.
Potters who build big, complex and figurative sculpture have been well-served by the technique’s design flexibility and strengthen-as-you-go process and by Joyce’s specific “here’s what you do when adding an appendage” experiential knowledge. (Joseph and I needed to learn the process in detail to film it fluidly, moving to the proper angle at the proper time before the clay dried, etc. and we came away very impressed by the ingenuity of the method, honed by generations of innovations and by Joyce’s mastery.)
The film, running two and a quarter hours, will be available in March from http://jmichaudgallery.net .
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This is an excerpt from an hour-long industrial instructional video that was shot and edited by Jeff Holden for Geil Kilns in Huntington Beach, CA. The product featured is the HVLP Deluxe Spray Gun.
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I met Giezi two years ago at the Pomona “Open Mic and Dim Lights”, which is a powerful gathering of poets and performers that I was lucky to find. I was moved by his poetry and his personality and asked him if I could film him.
He invited me to his family’s home and I spent the afternoon filming him painting on t-shirts and reading his poetry while his two younger brothers shyly but proudly looked on.
Occasionally we shoot product photos and these were for IMPAK Corporation (www.sorbentsystems.com), which sells packaging, desiccant and oxygen absorbers. We charge a pretty reasonable day rate so that we can have time to experiment with the shots, be creative, talk to the engineers and sales people, learn about the products and their applications, and shoot the product appropriately.
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The video shown here is a work in progress where we’re attempting to make a corporate video both somewhat formal (hence the grids of product photos) as well as interesting and unusual (hence the dog running in the evening sunlight). This is similar to a couple of other videos we’ve been discussing with clients. We’re looking to make corporate videos that connect with viewers in a rougher, rawer, less stylized way but that are still formal and high-tech enough for corporate clients. Joseph Bautista, our friend and music composer, titled the track: “The Whimsical Businessman”, which sums it up.
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A Stephen Horn instructional / documentary film is in the works. Steve is a ceramic artist — a potter — whose work over the last several decades has evolved from a heavier-handed, “macho”, monumental style towards a more delicate, thinner, George Ohr-inspired style. While he started out trying to “muscle” the clay(he put himself through school working construction), now he “allows things to happen”. But the key to allowing things to happen on the wheel, for Steve, is all the personal work that must happen off the wheel–all of the life practices and habits that nourish and strengthen spiritual strength and creativity. He surfs and practices Tai Chi, and he attributes these practices and the skills and awareness they require with his effectiveness with clay, but even deeper, Steve also mentions how the quality of your thoughts — your thinking life, will have an effect, adversely or positively. What is highly valuable listening to Steve comment on his work is that he is not a talker, not a windbag. He doesn’t have well-worn little artistic chestnuts. Steve is more reticent, very focused on the mysterious but familiar task of the clay moving in his hands. When he talks about his process in the film, it is meaningful, it is cautious, experienced, based on necessity and not windbaggery. All the artists I respond to are like this– never speaking from presumptive confidence, always carefully testing their words for truth as they speak them. It bespeaks a humble awareness that we all should feel but don’t. I am enjoying this film. Steve has things to say well worth hearing, and his techniques and work back it up.