Monthly Archives: December 2010

A Buck’s Worth · Short Film · DP Burke Heffner

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If you’ve seen the feature film $9.99, you’ll recognize this immediately, sort of. A Buck’s Worth was the short Tatia Rosenthal made to raise interest in $9.99. It is basically the first 5 minutes of the full length script, but with different models and different actors doing voice. It was my first time doing stop motion cinematography. I had a lot of fun.

Stop motion is a very different creature than the rest of the film world. As the cinematographer I’d show up for an hour or two in the morning, light the scene and set the camera, then leave for the day. While I was gone Tatia would crank away into the wee hours of the night, one frame at a time. On a very very good day she could blast through 9 seconds of story! For me it was sort of a perfect job, for Tatia?… who knows, all stop motion animators are a little crazy.

Circus Bookazine · Editorial · Photographer Burke Heffner

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14-fight-hairbrush

Circus Bookazine is a printed not-quite magazine, not-quite book, not-quite blog… hence the slug line ‘bookazine’.  Every article is written in both German and English, reminding me that I not only don’t read enough, I don’t speak enough languages. The first edition is focused on fashion.

How exactly I got involved is a little bit of a mystery… they really like the pin-up/burlesque aesthetic, but mostly I think Anke, their Editorial Office Darmstadt, has a girl crush on Veronica Varlow, my partner in crime, and was hoping I would get V involved… which I did.

I’m not really a fashion photographer, but they said they didn’t want regular fashion shots and what-to-wear articles anyway. They were trying to dig a little deeper, into the stories underneath the glitzy industry.  So this is what they got from me, a gentle mash up of vintage burlesque fashion and that terrible 90s movie ShowGirls.

Much love to Gal Friday, Jenny Cest Quoi, Nelson Lugo, Olga, and Marshall for their help.

And thanks to the Slipper Room where we shot… probably the last shoot to take place before the demolition ball arrived. The Slipper Room was NYC’s longest running burlesque venue.  Its currently a very sad constructions site, but promises to return in a few months with 2nd story balconies, rigs for aerial performance, and a stage curtain which the owner promise will close all the way, denying future audience members their usual sneak peek into the half-naked and frantic backstage world.

3 of my photos in a Chelsea Art Gallery

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I have three pieces showing at the West Chelsea Arts Building. My friend, Joe the Shark has taken over the fog gallery with a show titled, The Unsung Heroes of Burlesque-the photographers. I don’t know how heroic I feel for photographing barely dressed girls (tough job, someone has to do it)…

The 3 pieces I choose are life sized prints, or larger. Everything just feels fancy when you see it that big.

One of my photos is composed of 96 small prints, which make one whole photo. I broke a large image apart and labeled each piece on the back, so it could be re-hung easily and quickly. Then I sent the pieces of to be mounted… covering the labels and giving me a 96 piece jigsaw puzzle. Turns out i kind of suck at puzzles. Fortunately, Joe loves puzzles, otherwise I might have given up and hung it randomly (I kind of liked seeing Betty Valentine half formed in a pile of loose body parts and dollar bills).

The show will be up for another week. If you are into art, photography, burlesque, or just pretty girls you should check it out. There are several burlesque photographers showing, everyone who’s anyone in a very small scene. Some really nice pieces have turned up. There’s a closing party on Dec 16th. I’ll be there.

West Chelsea Arts Building
508 W. 26th St. Suite 5G
Show closes Dec 18th.

…Joe tells me the same 96 piecer is curling off its mounts, so I guess I’ll be there before that as well. I should have left it flat on a giant table for the guests to complete.

Jim is the Man…

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Wow… Just three days ago, my site looked completely different. I have been long over due for an upgrade. In my classic style, when i finally decided to make the change, it was only because a frantic deadline was looming.

But here we are 72 hours later, the site looks awesome… and functions. The charming transition happened thanks to Jim…

…whose own site is ironically modest given his capabilities. Its probably cause he’s working on other cool projects, like the one above.

I called to ask a few critically important questions, “like how do you type a (bullet) in a post?” But he was out scouting locations for a play that will only take place on the first day of snow… Try facilitating a large scale production based on that not-so-schedule-ready event.

Exposed · Feature Film · Director Burke Heffner

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Here are two scenes from Exposed, an independent thriller I recently directed. It was shot all on location here in New York City. The first clip is pretty gentle, the second is little more creepy. Weirdest of all… I just realized that one of the actors in both scenes is wearing a shirt of mine. Perhaps subconsciously that’s why choose these two scenes in particular?