David Eckard: Anxious Murmur

So, I think I’m going to buy a Sony HDR-FXI video camera when I’m in NY next week.

Any recommendations, warnings, suggestions about this particular model?

Strange, cryptic messages are unfolding across the studio wall…..

again, for the seventh season, playing old man “Tucker” in Turgid Gables Summer Theater’s production of “A Plowshare for the Admiral”…

“I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

Hmm, difficult prop to make in a birthday month……..

I’ve been generating the drawings/props for my soon to be deployed “illusions” and I have to say it’s a kick. There is something so liberating about whipping out these drawings knowing that they’ll be utilized for something bigger. Low-budget realities aside, charcoal and white-faced cardboard is fantastic.

Here are a couple of wall shots of an assortment of bottles (somebody once said draw what you know…) and a collection of other legerdemain players.

All around me now I’m seeing the prologue…

The next set is complete and it’s time to start gathering up tricks (so to speak). 

I’ve been jotting down illusions and “ta da” moments I want to create and here are a few that are scribbled on my wall:

apple to skull

giant stone/Atlas moment

ectoplasm puppet

rabbit from a bottle

hypnotic spiral

horse balancing on cup

floating brick

bell toll

rapid fire transformations

noose and flower

flowering log/disappearance

water pour/thunder

shadow dance

(if nothing else they’re all good band names…)

I’m excited about taking the diorama beyond just the visual effect/gimmick and actually creating performative actions that can be dependent on the artifice and character of the staged moment. 

Here’s a small test video I shot Sunday to check lighting, framing and spatial illusion. It’s pretty close.