RIVER
Word of the video began to spread and we began to give thought to a design for the cover. The sound man who worked with the group CAPITAL STEPS suggested a photographer, Maloof–Maloof lived on the shore of the Wicomico River south of Salisbury with his wife, MSMaloof. The timing of our production was in line when David Carradine, the KUNGFU star was advertised in Parade Magazine promoting his own tai-chi video. Professor was impressed by this because of the impact the TV series had even in Academia for the philosophical aspects even though Bruce Lee was passed over for the part because of our national racism. Academia being interested in really fake TV shows other than the pure entertainment value was a pretty scary insight.
The multi-cultural aspect of our tai-chi video was something we were proud of though the marketing of an Asian exercise taught by an Italian to music we had chosen which was German classical with a Polish director was not even on our radar. We paid a musician to come up with his own arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon using a synthesizer since intellectual property rights was something we wanted to honor–a recording of someone else performing the popular dead composer’s music was out of the question. Professor was also intent on keeping the length of the short form at seven minutes.
The weather finally broke steady in our favor. I had to rent a camera from TCI Cable TV Company in Ocean City since we were actually leaving the immediate area and school was in session. Professor performed the form on grass with the river in the background and our recording off to the side for his timing. Over and over Professor performed until the 69 year old man thought he got it right. That’s what he did: tai-chi ch’uan, mathematics, riding his bicycle and caring about the environment.
The river shoot took several days since we had to coordinate other sections of the video in the river setting including the principles and stances and the five sections from the side angle view. The water business was exploding and time was diminishing. I again had the three quarter video transferred to VHS with time code and created an edit decision list with a rented TV with a recorder and another recorder. Some of the sound from the river was distorted but summer was coming on quickly and there wasn’t time to re-shoot anything. The sound man promised a voice over session in his home studio down the line. I booked twenty hours of late night editing at TCI cable in Ocean City and had a workable print as water flowed enough that I was driving to Richmond twice a week and Fort Meade once.
June 29th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
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