I was DP on Mike D's visionary 16mm film -- the final title of which escapes me right now, it was something tragic about lonely boys.
So MD thought it would be necessary to blow up a pigs head and capture it on slow motion using a 16mm Arri-S, some dynoMITE and a simple light kit, and some plexiglass for protection.
He bought the pigs head from a butcher in the Eastern Market and he soaked it in hotdog water or something equally as smelly in this white bucket. The plastic kind that you get spackle out of. He had ot buy it early in the day because thats when the butcher was open. So it sat there for a whole work day in pigwater.
And boy when he opened that bucket I just couldn't believe how well that pigs head retained moisture!
Maybe we should have dried it out but we had dynomite and a passion for filmmaking and no time for such things.
So the plan was to actually mount the pigs head on a wood platter (maybe a plank I don't know the diff) and then hang it from a tree. In February. The camera would be behind a pane of plexiglass on the ground. It really was the only way to make sure all the spattering flew towards the camera.
It took a lot longer than we anticipated to shove the three pieces of dynomite in the pigs head. MD went through the back of the head. There is tons of cartilage and muscles and bonage in a pigs head. Maybe it was two sticks of dynomite. Either way - he wanted to make sure that thing blew wide open so he put the sticks deep into the facial cavities. It was gross.
So MD climbed up on a ladder and hung this pigs head from the tree. If you were laying underneath the tree it would look like the pig was staring straight at you.
So I set the camera up so its framing the pigs head straight above. MD fixes a long wick to light the dynOmite. Everyone is freaking out because we think we are going to get blown up or at the very least get a public citation. I crank that cameraup to superslow motion and wait for MD to light the wick so I can start the camera.
Sizzle bidizzle - the wick lights and I open the shutter. By this time everyone is in the house. I rush in to join them and look out the window. We wait.
And wait.
We get closer to the door to investigate and then see that it is taking forever for the wick to burn. The wick is like five feet long. All I could think about was 400 feet of film getting burned away and then it finally blows up.
It was more like a pop and it went really fast. Kind of strange. Pig pieces were all about but there weren't glorious chunks on the plexiglass like we thought there would be.
A week later when we got the film back we had three solid minutes of a pigs head moving gently in super slow motion and a wick slowly burning up to the back of the head. Bummer.
MD decided the only option was to get another pigs head. This time with a shorter wick.
And that is a short tale of true filmmaking memories.
