Post 4: Idea for the opening sequence

On Sunday, we went to see the new Woody Allen flick 'Midnight in Paris", a hugely entertaining surrealistic fantasy with a zillion characters. Now, I am thinking of an opening scene with partying Zelda, Scott, Talluhla and all showing up at the Lyric at night  for the vaudeville show in a fancy old 1920's chauffeured yellow car. Definitely over the top costumes and acting. As far as the look, script, zany gags,  and cinematography, I am thinking of course of my idols  Caro and  Jeunet: Delicatessen, A Very Long Engagement, The City of Lost Children, Amelie, Micmac a Tire Larigo... I am also thinking of Leolo. Mostly wide angle lenses, warm atmospheric colors, odd camera moves, unexpected juxtapositions, strange character actors.

Post 3: HDR pictures of the place

    I wanted to start with a good record of what the Lyric looks like now in its glorious"esthetic decrepitude", so we went down with my friend Randy Crow the other day. I took my cheap Home Depot work lights,  he brought some of his professional lights, and we spent the afternoon shooting wide views and panoramas.  
  Shooting HDR is a rather contemplative undertaking with up to 10 exposures ranging from 16 seconds to 1/30 s depending on the contrast, and while waiting for the long exposures, I started brainstorming about making a short film of a very surrealistic vaudeville show, with a very sparse "fellini-esque" audience of weird characters in the remaining dusty seats of the third balcony, on the wooden seatless "bleachers" of the second balcony, on the bare floor of the orchestra, and sitting in grand gilded baroque armchairs in the six ruined boxes on each side of the stage. Thee would be fire breathers, jugglers, magicians pulling huge ugly rabbits out of oversize top hats, bad singers, Roy Rogers on a live Trigger, contortionists, tango dancers, what else?

Post 2: Getting Involved

     I was invited by the Director of the Alabama and Lyric Theatres to come down and talk to him about my ideas, and he took me all through the old Lyric while we talked. He loved the place, and is definitely interested in anything that will help raise money and restore it to its former splendor. They are getting EPA grants for the cleanup of the old lead paint and asbestos. There might be a way to box of seal ed the  Asbestos curtain, but if it is going to be used as a curtain, it would have to be reproduced on heavy canvas.

Post 1: The Motivation

  A few months ago, I ran across an article in the January issue of Metro Magazine that was a revelation. I knew nothing about the old Lyric Theatre, right across the street from the Alabama theatre, and the pictures of Lisa Cole made me fall in love with it. I couldn't wait to get in there and see it, and photograph it myself...
  At the time, I was totally involved with the production of an Architectural Mapping Projection for the Paint the Town Red Festival benefiting the Jefferson County Red Cross on April 16. 2011. The project took around 700 hours on the computer doing animation in Adobe After Effects. The final show was a disaster because of a projector S.N.A.F.U., and it took me a coupe of weeks to recover from the overwork and the disappointment.

  Late in April, I was back in business, and sent a proposal to the Lyric Theatre, offering to Reproduce the old asbestos curtain on canvas, do a detailed HDR photographic record of the structure in its present stateof "esthetic decrepitude", create an Architectural Projection for the stage area of the Lyric to be used as a fund raiser, and help in any way I could to raise money and work on the actual restoration.