Pola and I are still rocking out with the Art of Juggling show, and here is our street show festival version:
There is a long setup, but it’s more of a character thing with some juggling (a cool balance trick) and a lot of hype to set up the grand finale of the entire show. This video shows the unique part of our show that the audience loves.
Ok, the “passing clubs around small children” is in no way unique, as I lifted it as a whole from Haggis and Charlie’s show (or, to put it another way, when I replaced Haggis in the show for a festival, Charlie taught me the salient parts) but it fits really nicely here.
And yes, I do perform 5 club backcrosses and 6 clubs in the show. Too hard, I know! In the theater version of the act we do a lot less talking, and the final trick is an awesome colour change trick with 5 rings that we’ve performed for 3 years now and never got round to filming.
One last note: my camera is broken, and every few minutes it starts zooming in by itself! Our volunteer cameraman worked out what was happening, but it still looks a bit weird.
At a street show festival this weekend Duo Desolato asked me to take some photos of their show. From behind, so they showed the audience. At night. And they gave me a little compact camera, which I knew wouldn’t do a very good job in those conditions. I said I’d use my camera instead, and email them links to the photos.
Of course, it let me try out my wide angle lens. Here’s the one I liked best:
A bit later a digeridoo player and drummer, under the name of “Umlaut” or similar (I left their business card in the van), took to the stage for an awesome drum ‘n’ bass set:
I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time; five to ten minute video tutorials on various subjects, sharing things that would have been impossible on the audio only Juggling Podcast show, in a very informal, one shot, unedited style. This is also a test of the video and audio capture capabilities of my new DSLR, which so far I find just about as acceptable as I thought they would be, considering the technology involved.
I was making a new set of colour changing rings anyway, so filming myself as I did it was no trouble at all. I quite like the results. I forgot to mention: the reason I cut away so much paper at the start, and not leave the center part of paper in until the final cut, is that it is almost impossible to do the rest of the cutting as the paper sticks to the table and stops the ring rotating.
If you have other things you’d like me to explain/share/investigate/make/etc, email me here: luke@juggler.net
In a following post I wrote up how I made the video. Like any successful project, it takes a lot of planning, knowledge, skill and hard work. A bit like juggling itself! In November of 2003 I flashed 12 balls for real, which sort of proves that point.
Luke Burrage’s 10 Step Guide to Juggling Video Forgery.
1. Think of a trick that people may believe you can do, has to be plausible. For me a 12 ball flash was near but the chances of me catching on video slim.
2. Drop a hint you are going to attempt it. The wimpy discussion was perfect for my requirements.
3. Buy a new tape for your camera if you have run out. Monday dinner time was good for me.
4. Remember, when filming anything, “Location, location, location.” Reasons why I chose my back yard and that camera angle:
-likely place for me to juggle in
-the sky behind is high contrast so you can see the balls above my hands
-the wall behind is low contrast so it is difficult to see the balls below my hands
-knowing that any ball on the floor would be stationary and easy to spot, the low angle and the raised edge of the gravel patch where I am standing would hide any dropped balls
5. Practice your reaction. This is very important. I chose that one because:
-throwing the balls to the ground is an accepted celebration but it also makes sure all the balls end up in a roughly the same place, right beside the dropped balls
-running past the camera and out of the shot means that I can get my acting out of the way quickly, leaving an empty screen, not me looking down at the balls that I dropped (for a closer examination see http://lukeburrages.thingonthe.net/juggling/videoreview.html )
6. Shoot yourself attempting the trick until you have a good selection of near misses with suitable celebrations. I was happy at 10 near attempts (8 catches or more with celebration, best was 10 catches but forgot to play the part) which took about 45 minutes.
7. Capture these attempts into your computer and review them until you find the one most suitable for the next stages.
8. Grab the frames in which the balls are dropping past your hands and before they hit fall out of site. Or in my case, the frames in which the balls bounce of my shoulder, off my arms and the one that just bounced off the ground. Frame by frame remove evidence of these balls. The best way to do this is to use the background of where the ball you want removing is from the frame before or after. Do not use smudging or cloning as this leave a visible trail where the ball is. This stage is made much easier if the balls are not easily visible in the first place.
9. Recompile the video, sans the sound. Removing the sounds of balls hitting gravel seemed to tricky to even bother. Grass would be the best surface for this, or maybe have some music playing. I never put sound on
my video clips anyway, so this wasn’t a problem for me anyway.
10. Finally “optimize” for the internet. All I think I need to say here is that low quality mpg can hide a multitude of sins.
Thank you.
Luke Burrage
PS. Does all this sound plausible to you? A lot of work for just a joke?
Well, you are right. The video is real.
The video wasn’t real. I know I’ve probably still got the original files somewhere, so one day I might upload the original, unaltered video clip.
