Nebraska!

This weekend I made a great discovery! 

I have friends!

Real Friends. The kind that get up before 7:00am on a Sunday to brave the sub-arctic temperatures and polar winds with you. These are things we have in Nebraska. But we also have talent! Although some of the equipment stopped working in the extreme cold weather, we made the most of it. A little audio overdub never hurt anyone, right?

We got good footage too! Then we drank coffee and cracked jokes at Village Inn. It was a pretty fun morning all things considered. I will remember it that way at least.

On a related note, these images are from one of two new films I'm working on. CALLISTO, so far features the music of Chemo Castronovo, and features composer, Rachel Whelan and Graphic Design Professor and Artist, Stacy Asher. Behind the scenes, Josh Fiedler, helped with sound and provided a second set of Photographer's eyes, while Dimitri Titov helped with the odds and ends that may go overlooked by some but which are pivotal to the making of something that requires so many people and so much detail.

The Adytum | Full Feature Film on Vimeo

THE ADYTUM | Created by Lexi Bass from Lexi Bass on Vimeo.

The full film is now on Vimeo.com, but dont forget to watch and vote for it in June at the www.cultureunplugged.com "We Speak, Here" online film festival.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me make The Adytum: Joey Crane, Megh Zahrndt, Jason Zahrndt, Tony Feltner, Ermir Bejo, Colleen Bertsch, Andrew Bergmann, Eloise Boisjoli, Adam Zahller, Zach Thomas, Yvonne Freckmann, Leah Fowler, Jessica Strong, and Jordan Waller.

Nebraska III: A Haiku

Scanning the road for
My lost button, and I swear
The winter steals them

The Best of Nebraska... In My Opinion.

I may not have the terminal master's degree in art, but dammit I have a master's degree and I got a job in academia... and that's how I finally was able to purchase a proper camera. So for this I must thank Nebraska.

Here's to the best things about Nebraska:

My apartment's giant window:

And Nebraskan Skies.

An Elegy

It would have been a

Gemini - It would have been

If I'd only known.

Embarking on a new journey... in Iowa.

I began by writing a loose outline of 5 dreams I had about birds. You might call this a screenplay and you might just call it an outline. Either way, my cohort, Josh Fiedler and I began making it this weekend.

On the off-chance that a nearby bird-handler and breeder might not think I was crazy, I ventured an email to Ted Golka of Double T Farm in Glenwood, IA - a mere 1.5 hours from my recent home in Lincoln, NE (I've been in Nebraska a year as of this week!). What I got after a few days was a response from his wife Janice about my request for collaboration. They did say it was a request they'd never gotten before, but didn't think I was crazy. Josh and I went down to meet them.

We found a great spot to make the scene I wanted, and I agreed to make them a promotional video of their bird release in return for allowing me to film my strange dream with their white pigeons.

After much work with the help of This YouTube Video and my darling Dimitri Titov, I built a camera dolly, loaded it up and headed to Iowa. 

Without giving too much away, here is the time-lapse shot of sunrise at the farm on August 10, 2013 - the precursor to the end of the film.

Time Lapse at Double T Farm, Glenwood Iowa - "How Bluebirds Are Born" from Lexi Bass on Vimeo.

Excerpt from upcoming film, "How Bluebirds Are Born" by Lexi Bass. Photography: Josh Fiedler. Filmed at Double T Farm in Glenwood, Iowa with help from Ted and Janice Golka.

I have much more work to do, but I have good feelings about this film. I'm getting better at making true friends all the time - which to me is the real skill of filmmaking.

Cinemagraph Test - Preparing for Mordancage

Once again, I have been asked how to make an animated .gif by a faculty member who will assign a class project in this medium. This time, it's my own fault because I suggested a "Cinemagraph" instead, which is basically a .gif made from video edited in Photoshop (shudder). This clip of me preparing for a morning of Mordancage processing was the only clip I had that would work for a Cinemagraph test. The result is as as ridiculous as one might imagine. 

Prepare to be unnecessarily captivated.