Argument production notes

I'm just going to consolidate all my notes into one buffer rather than in multiple notes. So it goes...

Last Wednesday, it all started. I got Tom Abram on film and didn't get nearly as much speaking time with him as with Paul Schmitt, but that's all the better, no two hours of footage to comb through. Also, the issue is not nearly as controversial, so I guess there's less to talk about. I ended up interviewing him inside the John Deere pavillion inside the Mech.E. Lab building. It was open and a large rooom. It had an earthy feel to it, a lot of brown tones to it, that and he wore a Brown blazer and matching shirt under it. I guess that goes along with the whole getting-back-to-the-earth-with-an-agricultural-mascot thing I'm working on. Just something I noticed.

Saturday I started working on the robot prototype. I decided it should be a human exoskeleton (read: costume), so that took a little messing with. I had to dumpster-dive at a local cycle shop to get large sheets of cardboard. There's actually a few of these caches in town, cardboard-only dumpters, so if you ever want to do paper sculpture, I would suggest finding one. I had to purchase my duct-tape and spray paint, but not before trying to hit people up for donations. I documented a lot things, the purchasing, the taping, the painting, the fitting, but it all really added up to about 20 minutes on the first day of construction. That and talking heads of people who walked by who I knew. I went for a variety of people, but it seems the people I know who were willing are of ... variety. I had really thought there would be an exclusively male support for the FARM BOT, but I actually have more female talking heads.

I had to go to a second day to get the larger things done, like the legs and putting together the torso. By the end of Sunday we had everything together except the head. I suited myself up and was impressed, albeit disappointed about the FARM BOT's inability to move gracefully. The walk is very short and stifled and you pretty much can't bend your knees inside the thing. But otherwise, I was glad to have it done.

Tuesday I went around takiing photos of iconic campus agriculural and engineering buildings. And the Morrow Plots. I didn't notice my camera was on manual focus or didn't have steady-shot mode on, so the photogs will end up looking interesting. But this is all B-roll anyways, so I figured it was usable. Side note, my friend was manning the table in front of a demonstration against the war, he helped plant hundreds of little white flags that represented 650 thousand or so Iraqi dead and six American flags to represent the 3 thousand or so of our soldiers who have died. It was poignant, and I captured the message.

Wednesday Tom and I finished the head and secured the other bits of the exoskeleton that weren't fully secured onto the body. I didn't have a camera and was kinda disappointed that the Art+D window didn't have cameras on hand. I secured a reservation for Thursday morning but instead borrowed my friend's. That all said, I suited up my friend who volunteered to be FARM BOT Thursday morning and we headed off into the world to wreak havoc. I first had to duct tape on the head, it took a lot. It didn't turn out that he destroyed and pillaged, rather showed his soft side and was extremely friendly. A lot of people gave him hugs or took him up on his offer. Frankly, a robot should be terrifying, but his facial features suggested otherwise anyways. So I'm going to go off on that angle, the friendly robot, the people's mascot. The destruction will be saved for the basketball court or the football field. We couldn't get the fireworks unit to work properly, but the corn cannon worked beautifully. We got a lot of positive reactions and even a mention on WPGU when we paraded in front of the Illini Media building. I managed not to get that on video, but the audio is terrible on green street and the DJ on duty came out on her break to speak to us and basically gush about the FARM BOT. Overall, it was a succesful venture and if we don't go out again in the exoskeleton, then I'm done with principal photography.

Friday I found out there was a robot party somewhere in town, but by the time I found out where it was (second and Armory, far far away) it was two in the morning and I had a bike ride six hours later, which I was still dead for. It would have been cool, but I'm not sure how I would have incorporated it, maybe FARM BOT could have beat the crap out of the other robots to show his dominance, but as we discovered thursday, FARM BOT is a friendly robot.