STOP:LOVE

Ahhh Valentine’s Day. I usually don’t look forward to this day even though I should since I am in a wonderful relationship and not sad and alone, however it just means I have to find something to get my lovely lady, usually at the last minute. In the end, they usually turn out OK, but this year’s was grand.

I had another early Chron assignment in the AM downtown, covering Eleanor Tinsley’s memorial service. The media access was restrictive and it forced me to dress up, but the church was gorgeous. On the way home I stopped and got Libs some awesome looking pink roses to satisfy the traditional.

Libs was in Chicago all week on business so I had ample time to think about what to get her, however the idea didn’t come to me until midday Thursday.

I had been wanting to play with some stop motion video for some time so I decided it was time. The idea I had was to create a stop motion movie based on a regular day for us at our current apartment. Sure we go out, travel and do a lot, but we also work from home a great deal so I wanted to illustrate that. Since we are moving to a new place soon I also wanted to emphasize our space, here, and create something that would hold captive those small memories of home that we have shared in this apartment.

Influenced by all of the awesome stop motion I used to watch on Sesame Street as a kid (Teeny Little Super Guy), I started to capture the frames. I wanted to use the song “Diagnosis” by the amazing dudes in The Weakerthans as the soundtrack so based on rough calculations I knew I needed between 500-600 still frames.

I took a photo of the two of us in Brooklyn over last Thanksgiving and cut it in half. I used her side to illustrate a few of her daily activities; waking up, showering, eating breakfast, watching family feud (lol) and working. I used my side to illustrate a few other things like getting dressed, playing with my awesome cat TT, and of course, working.

It was pretty tough, especially by yourself and being pressed for time. I winged most of the scenes and shot most of it in about 6 hours or so.

Today, after exchanging traditional gifts, Libs went to visit her mom as it was her birthday. It gave her a chance to do the finishing touches on her non-traditional gift to me and more importantly gave me a chance to throw my stills into final cut and see what I could come up with.

After some cutting, mixing, adding, subtracting and rendering I came out with a short little piece that I am happy with. The color is off, sometimes the focus was off, etc, but I love it even more for those little idiosyncrasies.

The folder that held the stills was hastily named STOP LOVE, so for the title, I went with that. I kinda dig it now that I think about it.

Libby finally got back home and with her came my gift. I was in awe! She never ceases to amaze with with her ridiculous craftiness. She bought a sleek lamp and replaced the lampshade with a custom sewn one made from slides of images of us together and other random images from our past. She used old slides, make custom slides from digital files and even planned ahead and shot slides with our old AE-1p while exploring the East Coast last fall. When it lights up it looks awesome! There are images below, but they don’t do it justice. It rules.

One of the images she used in the lamp was the same one I used in mine. See images below.

Afterwards I showed Libby my video. She cried. I think she liked it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 12:39 AM. It is filed under Multimedia, Music, Personal Work and tagged with Houston, Libby Johnston, Multimedia, Personal Work, Portraits, stop motion, Texas, time-lapse, Valentines Day, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.