It is week two of the new year and we are actually following through on a number of our resolutions. In this case, to start shooting a project Jack had scripted a few months ago.

Here he is checking my shot before we start recording. Location is the Sandy River at Dodge Park…what’s not to like about this composition? Jack directs, I shoot…we are a good team.

Gold stars for us this month of January 2012.

In 1925 audiences weren’t prepared for this visual assault but by today’s standards the repetitive shots and odd angles draw yawns.  Students of cinema have been sitting through the Battleship Potempkin and other Sergei Eisenstein works in editing classes for … well for ever.  The foundations for visual story telling have their roots in the techniques first used by the Russian filmmaker.

A couple of weeks ago a group of us went to this screening because it was a 35mm print (which is a rare opportunity). For the most part we enjoyed the 85 minutes and even came away appreciating a little “Foundations of montage” lesson.  Of course it didn’t hurt that we had dinner at the Pacific Pie Co afterwards.  js

we are, also posted in a now lost installment, building up the back veranda with a rock wall … the rocks coming from our land, truly native stone.  The excavator spent a day pulling them in from all over the property and managed to get quite a large pile of them.

the wall runs from the studio to just past the great room doors and then takes a turn that will eventually include a water feature … in the hunt for rock the “perfect waterfall rock” was discovered so the wall has been modified to include this, but we’ll actually put in the running water in a year or two.

the disruption of soil was a draw for a ‘drift’ of Quail … there were about 20 of them.

and all the time they were foraging one sat on the pile of rock to guard …

The wildlife sitings have picked up this Fall and hopefully there will be images from the new camera soon … js

The idea was to have a space on the house build site to stay and by stay I mean keep warm and dry but also have the abiltity to cook. The VW was just too small.  It also let us open up the troutdale house so it could be sold (viewed anytime). The reality is all that and living in the woods. There are challenges, like no internet service but we’ve found some ways around most of them … running water would be a good fix.

We had such nice weather … perfect fall day. Took advantage of it and spent most of the day on the land getting ready for the inevitable rainy weather. Looking like we’ll have another week of this sunny stuff (not complaining)

lots of wire

the electrician is done, mostly, we are waiting on the plumber to finish and then call for final and we can move on to insulation, sheet rock and occupancy … well maybe not that fast.

tomorrow the plumber but at this point we are wired … seems like they cut a lot of holes in the stud walls but noone seems to be worried.