Videoshoot at TCTV

On Wednesday, I did a videoshoot at TCTV.  I’d played around a bit with video, using home video cameras to tape techniques for WeaveZine, and having Kate come to my house to interview me.

Being at a television station, on a set with lights, multiple cameras, and a control booth, was a whole nother thing.

Loom on camera

The day started early, with hair and makeup by Fierce Locks, a business run by my friend, Dreadful Jonquil.  She specializes in funky hair styles and dread extensions, but was also up to the challenge of helping bring out my “inner Rachel Ray.”

When you put on makeup for the stage or television, you have to put it on heavy and dark in order to counteract the washing-out effect of stage lights.  So at the end—especially considering that I rarely wear makeup—I felt very “Kabuki Syne.”

The first time I heard the words, “Going black.  Cue talent, going live in 5…4…3…2…1” and saw three cameras looking at me like this:

On Camera in 3...2...1

I swear, everything I ever knew fell right out of my head.  You could have asked me my name, and I’d have been hard pressed to answer: “I’m not sure, starts with an ‘S’ I think…”

I actually got fussed at by a director.  Which at the time was disheartening, but now makes me laugh.  It’s so far out of what I’d considered possible for my life.

What made things challenging, and the reason for the fussing, no doubt, was that I’d imagined that the shoot would be done in segments, with plenty of time to breath between, and easy, short re-does if needed.  The director had other plans, though, and  wanted a seamless narrative.  So instead of showing one step of warping, and then having a break, I had to demonstrate the whole thing in one go, with no breathers and no re-does.

Yoikes!

But there was no other option, so I soldiered through.  And really, once I got to playing with the weaving toys, I settled down quite a bit, and forgot the cameras.

After it was “in the can”, the director and camera guys said nice things about my performance, and were gobsmacked when I confessed I’d never done anything like this before.  (Maybe they’d have fussed less if they’d known I was such a noob?)

Even better, they came and had a look at the looms, telling stories about weaving and learning knots in boy scouts.  (Weavers, I tell ya, we’re everywhere.)
Kabuki SyneBetween sets, Kate took a picture of me.  Even after a stressful day of traveling and shooting, the hair and makeup had held up pretty well.

We had a bit of time left at the end, so Kate had me run through warping a rigid-heddle loom, which—since I now knew what to expect—went much more smoothly.

The plan is for these warping videos to run on TCTV as a Talking Threads Media production and to be embedded as snippets in some how-to content for WeaveZine I’m working on.

So stay tuned!

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