Tennyson – Nine Lives

“I will burn it up, watch the ashes dance to the spin of the earth, feed those flames 'til there's nothing left. Let fire undo, my nights with you.” With lyrics like this it’s not hard to arrive at a ritualistic scene. Relying on our Key Grip Larry Kelly and my regular question “What can you do that’s visually spectacular and doesn’t cost much?” this time he said “I can give you a three-foot flame indoors in any location.” Things followed from there, with the idea that there would be one ritual space inside and one outside, with some kind of metamorphosis wherein Luke would transport himself to the other side of this divide. I drew on my connection to Siberian shamanism and conceived of a few different rules and elemental paradigms for the ritual. Outside, we found a local tree nursery that gifted us their location and we managed to borrow a man-lift from a friend with a window-washing company. We used the man-lift as a bridge to move Luke out to his “circle” where I had him carefully manicure the snow as a kind of character preparation. Meanwhile we positioned the firewood in place, with a box of fire logs underneath it to make sure it would get roaring, then lit the set with a 10k Mole HMI tener and 3 1x1 LED’s with for moonlight. When night came, Luke got into wardrobe, we ignited the fire and began filming. I think Luke’s performance was striking.

Red Scarlet
Mole 10k HMI
3x 1x1 LED Panels
Manlift
Indoor pyro