Amy, Carol-Anne, Alex, Keturah, Lee, Skye. Photo by elise
Aah, these are the days I love most, a non-stop rushing about between elements of the project. Disembodied from 7am to midnight. That’s the most fulfilling thing in life. Here’s a blog entry I scrawled in a notebook first thing that morning:
“The big news this morning was a call from David, our primary builder, who did a cursory schedule for the build, that unfortunately lead him to the conclusion that on top of one week building in the gallery, we need two weeks planning and building in advance. David is one of the handful of people whose salaries are not deferred, so this presents a large problem.
This evening he and I will meet with Ted, Carson, Alex, Carol-Anne and Keturah for a build meeting to see where we are and what needs to be done and such.
Afterwards, he and I will meet separately to figure out how to move forward. Essentially I think David won’t be able to pre-fab the concession stand and bleachers, but instead will simply manage the seven day build in the gallery.
I suspect Carson and I, or Terry and I will build those. David will be entirely focused on the walls and ceiling.”
So, yeah, basically, that’s what happened. We met. David and I had a 9pm dinner and caught up, he’s wicked busy, and he told me he can’t do the pre-fab work. Fortunately I had been kind of expecting this, so I had someone else in mind to make those pieces. My sister’s partner, Terry is a fabulous fabricator, and had been wondering how he would be nepotized into this thing. He found out, he’s now pre-fabbing the bleachers, concession stand and light-up concession menus for the lobby.
Before David and I had our late dinner, we met with Carson, Alex, Carol-Anne and Keturah-Anne (Ted couldn’t make it). This was a great meeting. We concluded that we just could not create a movie screen that people could walk through. My original vision was an actual screen, slit up the center. But that was always going to be too expensive. So, we toyed with doors that might be hidden enough, but I was never satisfied with any of them. I don’t want a door-rectangle on the painted screen of a wall. A tear in the screen I could live with. So, we dropped the idea of the audience emerging from the screen. Sad. But it simplified the build immensely.
If there is no screen emergence, then there is no need for a stage or a stairway or a hallway. So, we re-imagined the space. First off, now we are building just one wall. It will have the concession stand dead center on it in the lobby. To either side will be a door which leads into the theater. The theater will just be the screen and the bleachers. Though, still playing with the idea of a theater, when you enter the theater you initially see not the screen, but the bleachers and other audience members.
This is a big change. But a good one. It takes a lot of weight off.
Also at the meeting, Carl-Anne and Keturah really explained the interior design to David and Carson and we all got on the same page about what the ceiling and other design elements will entail. David had drawn up plan for installing the ceiling and chandeliers. We are going to install a metal frame on the ceiling to support the weight of our design. The lathe and plaster ceiling just didn’t inspire confidence for hanging so much beauty over people’s heads.
Before the build meeting I met with Yosh Han , the amazing perfumer who worked with me on the Henry Wing. We created the new scent, Disembody, for this project. It is very different from Archival, our first scent. Disembody is a very sweet, flowery scent. A true perfume, as opposed to the smell of memory that Archival embodied. I think we’ll easily sell out of the 23 bottles of Disembody that will be available.
After my first call from David, I met with Skye and elise. We looked at some rough footage and talked about ideas for how to edit the film in such a short time. We talked about how we’ll need to keep all of the files hyper-organized, and develop with Amy and Marcella a very concise and direct method of logging.
