Folklorist interview

We recently had our first interview with folklorist Jack Hanley! Being a very charismatic individual, he gave us some really good insight and soundbites for the film. We met him at his place of study, CU Boulder, and chatted with him for a good while. A good start!

Actually getting people to interview is proving to be a bit of a challenge. Several factors are contributing to this. One being that many of the people I want to interview are not in the public eye, and as such seem hesitant or suspicious about the whole thing. Another is finding people to help with calling and scheduling. It's a massive undertaking for me to do it all myself, and yet there doesn't seem to be many people actually willing to take on these responsibilities. Finally, my personal schedule has been completely full these past few weeks. Thankfully, things will be letting down soon.

Regardless, we truck on! I find myself taking on all the jobs I'm not good at, and finding people to fill the positions I'm comfortable with. We've already contacted a bunch of law enforcement individuals and are still waiting to hear back from them. Along with that, we'll soon be contacting a batch of other professionals, hopefully including a high school principal/teacher, somebody from CDOT, and maybe even a local politician!

Interviews and more

Exciting things coming up! We have an interview with a folklorist coming up this friday, who's done research on the bridge for the Colorado historic society. He's gonna be able to give us some good insight into the overall story and mythology of the bridge. We also are in the process of lining up some law enforcement personnel for interview, including some individuals who were involved with some of the recent events at the bridge.

We're doing the interviews on site at wherever the interviewees tread. This means driving out to boulder, limon, or any other out of the way location. While expensive, doing this is important since it'll give each character an identifiable space. These spaces say alot about somebody's personality, social standing, and relation to the bridge.

It begins!

The documentary is underway! Our first order of business was a preliminary broll shoot. This was to help define the overall visual language of the film and to get some stuff "in the can". Also, it helped us get to know the bridge a bit better.

We've been to the bridge once before, and happened to see what the location looks like at sunset. Because of this, we scheduled the shoot so that we ended right after the sun went down, so that we captured it but still drove home before it got dark.

The weather conditions at the bridge were very uncomfortable. The air was very hot and dry, the dust from the road was sticking to everything, and as the sun went down the bugs came out. But as always, the harder nature makes it for us the better the result:









Part of the shoot involved experimenting with different cameras and rigs. We did some extensive work with a remote control helicopter rig, and the results were fantastic.



The point of this wasn't just to play with some new toys. We needed to convey the scale and mass of the bridge and the landscape surrounding it. Being that many of the ideal vantage points are obscured by trees, it was important to get above the treeline and really convey the grandness that is the Third Bridge.

One of the other things I wanted to convey was the unchanging nature of the bridge. I wanted it to feel visually that as the world is changing, the road and the bridge remain still. Because of this, I brought a standard compact point 'n shoot to the set, the difference being that the software on the camera has been hacked to deliver automated HD time-lapses. As the sun was setting we did two setups with this camera, and while the images looked great we didn't have enough time to really get some nice long time-lapses like I hoped for. I plan to go back to the bridge and do some more in the future.

We also captured tons of standard b-roll using regular cameras. Rachel and Beth helped out on this endeavor. I instructed them to keep the cameras locked down and still, and only to use square framing. This was to help reinforce that visual weight and size of the bridge, and they did a great job creating that.