January 2023 – Jacob Shafer

I like juggling. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I juggle, I’m a juggler. I learned how to juggle years ago and I’ve never looked back. I strongly believe that anyone can learn how to juggle, and the basic juggling pattern (three ball cascade) can be done thoughtlessly once you know how. But juggling is also hard, advanced juggling anyway. The kind of juggling that crosses the line between quirky party trick and kind of cool party skill. Unfortunately, ever since moving here and enrolling in this program, the amount of time I’ve had to practice has dropped like the first ^*club I tried to catch.

Enter the personal project. Inspired by the skate videos shown by guest speaker Andrew Nedimeyer, I decided this would be a perfect opportunity for me to produce my own- markedly less cool- juggling reel.

As far as a timeline goes for this kind of project there are a couple of things to consider; firstly, I need to practice. As a pretty experienced juggler; learning new tricks can take anywhere from an afternoon, to several hours over the course of a few days. The project would also entail putting together a more thought out routine to feature in parts of the video, so after learning the tricks I’d like to perform, I’ll also need to spend time perfecting the aforementioned routine. Ideally this all happens before even beginning preproduction because until I know what I’m shooting the best I can do is some location scouting. At best I can foresee the entire project wrapping up within a month or two, giving myself one month primarily for practice and basic preproduction, and around two weeks for shooting and editing. The actual production will probably only take a couple of days but this would give me some wiggle room to balance it with other schoolwork. The neat thing about this project is that it will cost me nothing. I have all the juggling props I’d like to use, a camera, and all the other production equipment I want just a conversation with Ed away.

*Juggling clubs, not like a dance club. I recently learned how to juggle the bowling pin-esque props. Maybe I can use that to get into Berghain or something.

probably not

adjective

^*having or displaying a large amount of gusto

Steve Hansen’s presentation was perhaps the most engaging to date, and for good reason. The depth of knowledge and passion which fuels his distinct visual style is both inspiring and intimidating. As someone who- perhaps naively- shirks from the idea of creating work for commercial advertising; learning about the seemingly endless applications of such work and seeing firsthand the amount of creativity it truly affords was super interesting.

For my attempt at the assignment I decided to go with something fairly simple and close to home for myself, this of course being the ubiquitous coffee bean. Apart from the subject I wasn’t immediately sure the direction I wanted to go. I’m not a barista and the prospect of manifesting a hot latte (which reads as slightly more appetizing to me than merely a pile of roasted coffee beans), within the confines of the studio seemed like a logistical hurdle I don’t have the brain power for. So I went with something familiar to me, and decided to feature my preferred method of brewing joe at home: the Chemex. This choice- and still attempting to resist the unyielding fist of capitalism- had me leaning towards going with more of a lifestyle feel, as evidenced by the lack of product labels. However I did end up composing it in a way which did leave a nice space for print. So like Chemex maybe hit me up.

Overall I had a pretty good time with this assignment. Being able to just zone out to some music in the empty studio and tinker with my setup turned out to be pretty soothing. I did run into some troubles along the way however; namely using strobes for the first time and dealing with some tricky reflections on the glass, but the practice it granted me with post production and manipulating lighting elements was invaluable and fun.

^*not really