This project was the labor of love for photographer Kyle Cassidy and fantasy writer Caitlín R. Kiernan. Kyle had read her upcoming novel The Drowning Girl in galleys, and it inspired him to develop “scenes from a movie that was never made.” He and Caitlín lined up performers, contributions from fantasy artist Michael Zulli, and decided upon creating a series of photographs and a promotional video for the book. They also set up a Kickstarter page to attract funding for the project.
The shoot was in Providence, Rhode Island on the weekend of October 15th, with a crew of actors, assistants, friends, and myself as videographer. Generally, Caitlín directed the performers while Kyle supervised and snapped stills; I tended to follow Kyle’s lead on the subjects, but I also hunted down other angles, vantage points, and whatever useful scenery would make for visual interest. The original video was shot at full hi-def at 60 fps, which not only gave us some lovely slow-motion video, but gave us considerable leeway in reframing shots for the final 1280×720 video.
I edited the nearly-three-hours’ worth of footage into rough drafts of a thirty-second “teaser” trailer, and a longer trailer running a minute and a half. Edits were run past Caitlín and Kyle via YouTube and email. Overall, our approach was to avoid telling anything of the story in the book, and create a mood of uneasiness and mystery.
As of this writing (Jan. 2012), only the teaser’s been made public, with the full trailer due to be released in late February or early March. There is a second round of shooting scheduled in late January, and I expect to have perhaps two or three versions of the full trailer ready for release. (I’m also playing with a home movie style “making of” video, using the unused footage and stray behind-the-scenes moments, but we’re not at all sure how we’ll use that.)
If you’d like to read accounts of the shooting weekend (as well as some wonderfully generous comments about the video), here are links to Kyle’s and Caitlín’s LiveJournal accounts.
From me:
http://briansiano.livejournal.com/1034581.html
http://briansiano.livejournal.com/1035118.html
From Kyle:
http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/666562.html
http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/670135.html
http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/675920.html
http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/675725.html
http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/677301.html
From Caitlin:
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/811295.html
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/811774.html
http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/812009.html