I thought I'd start my blog off with one of my favorite GFU videos so far. In early February I found out that Mark Terry was planning a kiln firing with his ceramics classes. Clay, Fire, Flames, Pottery! What could be a more visually interesting story to capture!?
Mark emailed me some directions and I soon found myself, camera on board, driving out to the outskirts of Forest Grove, OR. I finally found the place. It was a tree farm on a hill. A truly beautiful location. I found Mark and one of his former students, Scott, loading the kiln. I took out the camera and grabbed some loading shots. They were dealing with the challenge of fitting a table-full of pottery into a kiln with limited space. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle. In the end, most of Mark and his students' work made it into the kiln.
I knew I wanted to document the entire process, so it was going to take at least 4 trips out to the kiln. The first was the loading, the second was an evening in which the students would be stoking the fire (and roasting some marshmallows), the third trip would be the daytime interview with Mark, and the fourth was the grand unloading. I unfortunately couldn't make it to the grand unloading because I was at a film festival in Los Angeles. However, my trusty work-study student, Natalie, got some great shots for me in my absence.
I was really pleased with how the night-time footage turned out with the Sony EX1. I love this camera. One cool feature of the EX1 is its in-camera slow motion. I first got to use this with the pottery video. I setup a dolly and a light in the pottery studio and had Sara work with some clay. Natalie pushed me on the dolly fairly quickly as I shot 60 frames a second. I was then able to play those back at the standard 24 frames per second and it gave the effect of super-smooth slow motion. This provided some really awesome and dynamic b-roll footage for Mark's interview.
Overall, I think its a great video because it emphasized George Fox's unique community. As a graduate of George Fox, the family-like community that comes with the smaller class sizes was one of my favorite things about George Fox. Oh, and on a side note, Mark Terry was named the 2010 Art Educator of the year! Read about it on the George Fox University Homepage.
