This is going to be another day of your wondering just what we were doing in the US. Running around filming demos in pretty places, certainly, but surely there’s more to it than that? There is, but… well, I’m not going to reveal everything just yet. Partly because I’ve only just finished logging all the shots, so it’ll be a while before we know what’s made the cut and what hasn’t. But also because I don’t want to spill the beans about the main story and content of the film until we’re much closer to publication. And that’s likely a few months away.
So enjoy the holiday snaps, and watch out for clues peppered through.
I remembered two things from the previous day: we did a bunch of props shopping in the morning, and I found out what ‘Chicken Fried Steak’ is. On reflection I could happily have seen out my days without such knowledge.
Day 2 – Thursday 15th August – Buena Vista to Durango/Silverton
Alom leans on the car to explain our route across the US.
OK, so the plan had been for us to blog as we travelled across America filming the segments of this documentary, but… well, that didn’t happen, what with us being back now and all. Jetlag, altitude sickness, thunderstorms and 14-hour days will do that to you. So let me present: the retroproduction blog. Just like what we planned, only two weeks later.
That screenplay we mentioned a couple of posts back? We’re filming it.
We’d hoped to post regular updates, but we’ll have to run them as retrospectives over the next few weeks. The script is fairly straightforward, so we’ve been making our lives harder by trying to film classic demonstrations in fabulous locations. Which means we’ve been up early, filming in morning and evening light, and trying to find weird places to shoot. Several of those locations have been above 10,000 feet, which does wonderful things for bicarb and vinegar but is less pleasant for brains and lungs.
The above is perhaps my favourite shot so far, though we’ve several contenders. I hope you like lens flares.
update: There are a bunch of posts in this series:
[1] [1a] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [Post]
I wasn’t completely … er … complete in my previous post, in that the demo films aren’t the only thing we’ve been beavering away at behind the scenes. There’s also this:
“DEMO – a teacher training film (of sorts)”
That’s a screenplay. For a documentary. Which we’re about to start filming. On Friday. Then we fly to America, and film some more. Then we fly back to the UK and … film the bits we missed.
It’s terribly exciting. Once the thin veneer of panic has worn away we might even believe that.
We’ll keep you posted here: expect ScienceDemo to turn into something of a production blog if we can (a.) find a US 3G card for the iPad, and (b.) get any signal. Where we’re going they do need roads, but possibly not modern telecoms infrastructure.
We appear to have been quiet here primarily because we’ve been busy. It’s one of those weird zen tricks, and it looks like this:
Alom Shaha on camera for Get Set Demonstrate Demo films
Yes, we’ve been filming again. Aficionados of the Physics Demonstration Films will recognise Alom’s lab at Camden School for Girls, and it was good to be back there after a couple of years. However, you may also notice the lab glassware. A beaker, in a physics film?
Nope.
Chemistry specialist Andrew Hunt looks on as presenter and NQT Laura Grant rehearses.
We filmed some chemistry too. And not all of it was with Alom. Though Laura did wear a purple shirt to fit the house style.
Oh, and if you wonder how much effort goes into these films – we slave over the scripts, but the first time we’re all in the same room with the props and the camera is when we’re set to shoot them, so this happens:
A chemistry script is revised on set during filming for Get Set Demonstrate demo films.
So, yes: science demo films, coming soon to a website near you. Yay! Oh, and: Biologists, don’t despair! We’re featuring squishy things too (rather than merely things that blow up or don’t work, obviously), we just haven’t shot those films yet. We’ve another surprise to reveal before then.
