Casablanca Lily
I've been saving this story for Easter, it seems so appropriate.
This year I spent yet another Valentine's Day alone and I wanted to make a Valentine for Jesus, a sort of music video set to the song "Signature of Divine" by Needtobreathe. (What a great song that is!) I was going to compose one from images and video that I found on the internet. I wanted it to be perfect, so I drew from the Bible for a definition of perfection.
It made me think of this verse from Phillipians:
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.” Philippians 4:8.
I was thinking in my mind, what is visually lovely? Flowers! Not just flowers, but flowers blooming. I went to Getty Images to find time lapse footage of flowers blooming. Getty Images is a bank of stills and footage used by professionals...broadcast quality. I found a really beautiful time lapse of a peony slowly opening but it cost something like $60 for a 21 second clip. I'm flat broke, so I endeavored to make one for myself. I went down to the local cable access station to check out a camera and chatted to the attendants about making a time lapse video. To my surprise, we determined that it was possible to do with the equipment they lend out.
The next thing I had to do was find an unopened flower. Horrocks, a local farmers market, is my source for buying flowers (very inexpensive). Peonies weren't in season, in fact, lilies were the only flowers that had not bloomed. (Lilies are also the flowers most associated with Easter.) It cost me under $2 for the single stem.
Ok, I had my flower now I had to set up a location. I found a corner in my basement to set up shop, so to speak. I didn't know how long blooming would take, so I used the fixed lighting in the basement in lieu of setting up video lights. Next, I set up the frame giving adequate space for the finished effect. I set the camera to interval record- 5 frames every 5 minutes. The lily took 3 days to bloom. (What beautiful symbolism!) And, guess what? The 30 second clip rendered out to 6.6 MB.
I showed the finished project to my new boss who was absolutely delighted with my experiment. She thought it was symbolic and wanted to know what it meant. I was looking for the meaning assigned to the Casablanca lily and I found it in an advertisement for a candle.
"Grace is an exhilarating, refreshing scent marked by pure essence of Casablanca Lily, the Roman symbol of hope. This evocative candle creates a relaxing mood in any room of the house. Each candle also includes a book of matches with the Tocca logo."
There are 66 books in the Bible and when I was just about to leave the Maryland Film Office a coworker had a daughter she named Grace. She weighed 6.6 pounds at birth.
It's amazing, that grace is.
This year I spent yet another Valentine's Day alone and I wanted to make a Valentine for Jesus, a sort of music video set to the song "Signature of Divine" by Needtobreathe. (What a great song that is!) I was going to compose one from images and video that I found on the internet. I wanted it to be perfect, so I drew from the Bible for a definition of perfection.
It made me think of this verse from Phillipians:
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.” Philippians 4:8.
I was thinking in my mind, what is visually lovely? Flowers! Not just flowers, but flowers blooming. I went to Getty Images to find time lapse footage of flowers blooming. Getty Images is a bank of stills and footage used by professionals...broadcast quality. I found a really beautiful time lapse of a peony slowly opening but it cost something like $60 for a 21 second clip. I'm flat broke, so I endeavored to make one for myself. I went down to the local cable access station to check out a camera and chatted to the attendants about making a time lapse video. To my surprise, we determined that it was possible to do with the equipment they lend out.
The next thing I had to do was find an unopened flower. Horrocks, a local farmers market, is my source for buying flowers (very inexpensive). Peonies weren't in season, in fact, lilies were the only flowers that had not bloomed. (Lilies are also the flowers most associated with Easter.) It cost me under $2 for the single stem.
Ok, I had my flower now I had to set up a location. I found a corner in my basement to set up shop, so to speak. I didn't know how long blooming would take, so I used the fixed lighting in the basement in lieu of setting up video lights. Next, I set up the frame giving adequate space for the finished effect. I set the camera to interval record- 5 frames every 5 minutes. The lily took 3 days to bloom. (What beautiful symbolism!) And, guess what? The 30 second clip rendered out to 6.6 MB.
I showed the finished project to my new boss who was absolutely delighted with my experiment. She thought it was symbolic and wanted to know what it meant. I was looking for the meaning assigned to the Casablanca lily and I found it in an advertisement for a candle.
"Grace is an exhilarating, refreshing scent marked by pure essence of Casablanca Lily, the Roman symbol of hope. This evocative candle creates a relaxing mood in any room of the house. Each candle also includes a book of matches with the Tocca logo."
There are 66 books in the Bible and when I was just about to leave the Maryland Film Office a coworker had a daughter she named Grace. She weighed 6.6 pounds at birth.
It's amazing, that grace is.
posted by Nicole at
12:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home