Original image & cover design for Where To Now?, a new novel by Rod Rogers. Now in print and Nook or Kindle, etc., available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the usual places.

Michael Smallwood & Randy Neale of Superior Donuts at PURE Theatre

Thanks to the extremely nice crew at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts on Savannah Highway in Charleston!

Hey, that’s my image of PURE Theatre‘s production of Circle Mirror Transformation by Annie Baker on the cover of last week’s Charleston Scene! It may also get featured in American Theatre magazine next month.

Circle Mirror Transformation at PURE Theatre. Photo by David Mandel & Ampersand Industries

Videos? Yes. There has been a lot of video activity in the world of Ampersand Industries lately.

This one’s about a long-term collaboration between PURE Theatre and UCLA/REMAP to produce Macbeth/Macbett by Shakespeare/Ionesco in Los Angeles and Charleston:

Jeff Burke on Macbeth/Macbett for PURE Theatre & REMAP/UCLA from David Mandel on Vimeo.

This one’s for PURE Theatre‘s production of Low Country Boil:

This one’s for eSite:

And this one’s a real-time tutorial of Cottage Industrialist illustrating how to make tortellini out of practically nothing:

Thank ya kindly.

Work in Progress

I just wanted to share the behind-the-scenes process for this shot. The photo shoot was pretty quick at the end of a rehearsal, about a week and a half before the show opened. The set for Yankee Tavern wasn’t built yet, so we pushed together some bars and threw some black curtains over a couple of room dividers. The main light came from a full-blast remote Speedlight SB 600 that was handheld on a stepladder. In post, I changed the color of Katie’s shirt to match the woman’s dress in Hopper’s painting. Also adjusted the color on the bar and the back wall, filled in the dark background, and adjusted the lighting. A printout of the original “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper is visible on the right edge of the bar in the unedited photo.

Yankee Tavern from David Mandel on Vimeo.

PURE Theatre is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization in Charleston, South Carolina. We’re in rehearsal for Yankee Tavern, a play by Steven Dietz. This clip features interviews with the cast: Will Hodges, Katie Huard, Randy Neale & Mark Poremba. The show is directed by Sharon Graci, PURE’s artistic director.

I’m associate artistic director for PURE, and I filmed this clip on a Nikon D300S.

Director Esther Bell (Godass, Exist) and I went to Hunting Island to make this short film about loneliness. This was a few years ago, maybe three . . . perhaps more? I saw a 15-second clip of it before, but I just watched the full version for the first time tonight.

The Internet is so wide, and my boat is so small.

In it, I play like an existentialist Gorton’s Fisherman (who, if you go to the Gorton’s site, appears to be played by an Alec Baldwin impersonator/brother now). The voiceover guy, Ted Passon, is somebody who is not me having thoughts quite different than the ones I was having when we were shooting. My deep inner monologue: “My shoes are wet.” “I think my fishing reel just broke.” “How did these trees grow out here on the beach?”

I don’t remember us getting enough footage to string together more than 3 minutes. I think this aired on a station that exclusively ran nonlinear HD content, before you could get a 1,000-inch flat screen HDTV for $100. It was an era not unlike the time before MTV stopped playing videos. And then I think this eventually ran on IFC, which coincidentally tonight is showing a movie called Flannel Pajamas starring Julianne Nicholson, who was in Esther’s movie Godass.

Six pieces of bacon.