THE GREATEST LAKE

The entry in the 2010 year's competition, entitled The Greatest Lake, was the first part of a four-part movie which grew to about 40 minutes long when completed for 2011. It documents my travel around the world's largest fresh water lake in area, Lake Superior.

It is not totally a documentary: it is punctuated by frequent fictional but related skits with canine travel partner, Lily, to add humor to the story, usually in a campground setting. It may be somewhat inspired by an old travel moviemaker I used to enjoy on TV, Stan Midgley.

Music

Music selection is an art in itself. I like to play various music possibilities, close my eyes and dream my way through how it may fit the visuals.

In The Greatest Lake I used so-called "buy-out" music by Fresh Music Library and Music 2 Hues Production Library. They are not cheap (about 30 to 40 dollars per album), but I have full rights to use them.

Film & Video

The original material for The Greatest Lake was taken on 16 mm Kodachrome film, long before I made the transition to video. The film was then transferred commercially to video for editing on an Apple I-movie computer system. It enabled me to add subtitles and historical flashbacks through identifiable transitions and black and white visuals converted from color ones.

Maps were done with the video camera and titles added in the computer. The Greatest Lake was filmed on three trips: 1993, 1994 and 1997. I've been working on it off and on ever since, doing other projects along the way.

Lily

Many of the actions and expressions captured in my camera of Lily were one-take shots that were most valuable in the skits I was able to develop into meaningful humor. Some of these skits were conceived while traveling, but most of them were developed later based on the material I had.

Further takes were made later to complete the story, such as the beach party skit while in the tent, that was shot in the backyard at home. Some shots of Lily caught during our traveling could only be simple dumb luck.

All filming locations were, of course, open to both me and my canine companion. That makes it easier to select what I see and not see. If Lily can't go there, neither do I. There's not enough time to see everything anyway.

Excuse me for being sentimental, but those who own or owned dogs will understand.

Lily died on New Years Eve, 2007, at the age of 16. I loved her dearly. If dogs don't go to heaven, it wouldn't be heaven. If dogs don't go to heaven, then they never really exist, except as manifestations of God sent down here to teach us how to love.

I used a Bolex Rex-4 camera with a 12-120 Angenieux lens and a 10 mm Switar wide-angle. Sounds like days of old. A Bolex tripod or a wooden gunstock shoulder support were used, whichever best suited the given situation.

I have had my share of computer nightmares when it frequently decides to thumb its nose at me and do its own thing. The best solution for me has been to save it, shut it down and walk away from it for a while.