The decision to re-awaken the Chrysalis Guitar project was made in the Fall of 2012. As a basic asset for going forward, we knew we would have to make a “flagship” video to introduce the instrument. I had never made a video or used video editing software before. We had a lot of archived still images to help fill things out, but we wanted to include at least two new video sequences - a slow fly-over eye-candy sequence and a full dis-assembly / re-assembly sequence.

For video equipment, there was a little Canon ELPH point-and-shoot camera, and for lighting there were several hardware store aluminum dome reflector lights with incandescent bulbs from the shop. The set was the kitchen table covered with a piece of green fabric. The lights were clamped to maple poles arranged this way and that leaning against chairs and over the table until things looked good. A light rub with olive oil made the carbon-fiber parts shine in a nice way.

The opening sequence of the video, with the long slow fly-over down the length of the instrument, was made with the camera hand-held. To smooth out its motion during the traverse, the camera was taped to a brick, and the brick got heavier with each long take. It took about a half-dozen tries to get a shot smooth enough to use in the video, and even that needed a bit of further smoothing in the PowerDirector video editing program.

For the dis-assembly/re-assembly sequence, the camera was mounted on a cheap wobbly tripod set up on the table to maximum height, looking as straight down as possible. The Director/camera operator (Cheryl) also stood up on the table behind the tripod. . To help frame things properly as well as help the talent (me) keep the guitar parts in view during the sequence, the four corners of the field-of-view were marked on the tablecloth with pieces of green thread. It took about ten takes to get the one we needed.

Harvey Reid let me use a couple of videos of his performing on a Chrysalis guitar as musical background for the video. Working on my little 13” laptop it took two full weeks to edit everything together to a nice conclusion.  I could never get it down to under three-minutes, which everyone said was the maximum allowable run-time. Each final rendering took several hours, and if you so much as looked cross-eyed at the computer while it was rendering, it would crash. But finally we got it. There were some minor glitches, like mis-spelling the company name in the credits.

After the Chrysalis guitar was re-named the Ridgewing guitar, the video had to be edited to reflect the change, as well as spiff it up with an artistic intro and trailer featuring the dancing dragonfly. So I got to learn a little animation as well.