Defying Gravity

That mammoth Sequence 004 with it's hundreds and hundreds of frames, moving camera, emotional dialogue etcetera is in the can.  I've processed the raw frames and backed up all the data.  The poor puppet has been stripped down to bare bones for major repair work - she was literally a wreck by the end of it.  I've had to rebuild her jaw and replace half her face!

Her last words in the slate are spoken facing away from the camera out of necessity - she simply could not have managed the lip movement. A peculiar consequence came about, however, because I needed her to end the take with an angry reaction to an offscreen event that was now a full 270 degree turn from where she was facing.  She performed the turn magnificently, of course, but watching it play back the first time, my immediate reaction was a burst of unexpected laughter at how ridiculously flamboyant it was!

We are all terribly serious!

I was mortified at my insensitivity.   This is not meant to be funny!  Playing through the shot again and again, I began to work out what happened.

Have you ever been in a situation (family arguments and funerals have a strong market share here) where the seriousness of a situation makes it so inappropriate to laugh that a giggle becomes the only rational response?

Have a think and we'll come back to it.

Meanwhile I've stumbled across a film that gave me a bit of a fright.  I spoke not long ago of bad tripods and what should crop up but a production by R S Cole operating as Wobbly Tripod.  Coincidence, you say?  Well just you have a look at his set.



I'd never seen the film until yesterday - I'm certain I would have remembered - and of course Cole's story is different, but I'm struck by how similar my mise-en-scene is to the grand matte paintings above.

I even wanted to start by pulling out from a waterfall!  When I saw the little bird flit past, my heart nearly stopped!  I think I'd better think that bit out again.

Gravity makes water fall

Eric Idle (yes, that one) wrote a book called The Road to Mars.  In it he poses the question:  What's the opposite of gravity? Gravity, we know; is a force that keeps everything down, stops things from simply floating off into space.  Newton's laws suggest that for every force in the universe there ought to be an opposite force right? In nature you have electromagnetism which makes the ground nice and hard so things don't fall through it into the centre of the earth.

Did you think of a time when you laughed at the wrong moment?

We also use the word gravity to describe something else.  Not a force but a state of mind.  Idle concludes that the opposite of gravity is levity  A state that lifts us.  It does what electromagnetism does in the physical.  Prevents us from collapsing under the weight of our circumstances and creating  black holes.  Another way of describing the onset of depression. A bit of humour makes us step out from our thoughts and can stop us from taking ourselves and the things that happen to us too hard. Getting to a laugh in time can be a lifesaver.

A cautionary tale:  The Weasels all died laughing

In our lives and in our stories, we must have a balance of both.  I guess that's why my puppet made me laugh before.  After a long time (too long - five weeks shooting that scene) being grave and melancholy, you've got to throw in a laugh to re-balance yourself for the next thing to happen.

But you don't want to take it too far - remember the Weasels from Who framed Roger Rabbit?