click on the first and third you tube videos on side of page-jm

i am trying to post video of my 16 mm footage and it is being difficult, i'll try later see the side videos for now- jm

wow, time flies when you are having fun, this semester has been a whirlwind, i havent blogged in a while so i need to catch up a bit. let's see, i could talk about my trip to lucama on november 2-4, i havent talked about that yet. o.k. well i got that friday off from baby duty and my wife was home all day, there was a storm off the coast of the atlantic seaboard and i had just picked up all of my equipment and dropped it off at my house to wait for my group. plans changed for them and i realized i had to go it alone. so i grabbed the jvc dvx and some sticks and got in my van and hauled butt since it was already 3 pm. and the kick off was at 6 pm. after a 2.5 hour drive i made it up to wilson and found a parking spot right up front. i went inside the arts center and told the receptionist i was looking for barry paige. while i was waiting i struck up a conversation with some of the guests. they started telling me all kinds of things (most i knew already) when i asked them if they would like to go on camera they declined, so i decided maybe this wasnt the venue for my film. barry paige came out and introduced me to the coordinator for the whirlygig festival and she asked me if i was the filmmaker from canada, i said no but realized that i am glad i was doing this film this year and not later years because it is of special interest for many people. i explored the meet and greet and soaked in the smells and sights of the banquet before me. it was all designed for hobnobbing and was very informal. i kind of wandered around and looked to see if there was a podium or some sort of a pulpit for public speaking and seeing none. i looked around and saw it was not going to be my scene. barry paige was busy with people so i looked outside. the wind was churning and blowing like crazy. daylight was losing fast. i thought to myself. if vollis and family is here, who's at the park? no one. i slipped out quietly and motored out to whirlygig farm.

when i arrived there it was just as i suspected, the gigs were moving ....yes! quite rapidly in fact. i got out my camera and started to soak it all in. and capture the most i could. whirlygigs were moving that hadnt moved in the past and the noise was truly unique. it was really empty at the farm and no one was there. my dad called me while i was out there (he lives in michigan) and i tried to describe to him what was going on and he could sense my excitement. i stayed out there till the sun went down and grabbed all i could. at night it was very black this particular night but the wind was cool and smelled clean like rain. i fired up the spotlight and set up my shots. unfortunately the light takes a lot of juice and i had to run my car to keep it going so i have no audio from that night. i hope to get it on another night or day. the audio would have had a running car in the back ground, anyway. so i used a whole hour's worth of tape. and decided to go home and hoped it would be this wonderful out there the whole weekend.

so on sunday morning of the fest. i got up early like 7:00 in the morning and call skip from documentary class. he agreed the day before to help me shoot some stuff for the festival. i was so excited i drove us straight to the park hoping for the same magic that happened on Friday night, (i had been watching the trees move the whole way up and listening to the weather). the wind was there just not very strong. i set up the marantz and stereo mike first thing because i really needed the missed audio. once the sound station was set up i started showing skip some of the things i was looking for, but i stressed that i really was looking for other people's perspective as well. i have told everyone that has helped me on this project the same. the late morning and early afternoon produced some bursts but people, planes, and vehicles really cramped the purity of the sound grab on some of the sound files. i got a workable list and was fairly happy. speaking of people, the farm was kind of busy but i was really expecting a lot of people checking this park out due to a runoff from the festival and was surprised that was not the case. at mid afternoon , we decided to go to the festival and check it out. we got to wilson and not alot was going on, we drove around and they had all the streets blocked off. so we looked around for whirlygigs instead and found some we hadnt seen before and filmed them. i thought we should go back to the farm, and we stopped off to robert's family restaurant on the way back and got some of north carolina's most famous barbeque pork and took it to go and ate under the whirlygig's shadows. we spent some more time filming and taking pictures. i grabbed a tape of the sunset so i can do a time lapse sequence. and thought, i think i have done enough. we shot another tape of mixed footage, one of the sunset, took 4 rolls of pictures, and got some sound grab (the early morning was all that produced the best sound for us. the rest of the day was a wash for sound) i wanted to get skip back home. if the whirlygigs were turning like friday nite we would have stayed. i fired up the spotlight for him and some hippie visitors and drove the long road home. i had my moving footage and my sound i was fairly happy. i called the simpsons and let them know that i was leaving but told them i would be back to get some random grocery list items for post and left the farm behind for now


jm