The Detailers - Heat
The campaign was developed by ad agency, Twofifteenmccann and included 5 documentaries and a series of vignettes and recipes. The documentary component was called 'The Detailers' and focuses on a range of craftsmen and artists from around the Bay Area. Each film reveals an obsessive commitment to a craft and the artist's passion for the smaller details in their work.
This third short film by Strike Anywhere, features David Patchen, San Francisco's celebrated glass artist. Originally a guitarist and a musician, David now directs all of his creative energies towards his blowpipe and glass furnace. This video features the making of his organic glass forms called 'Bloom' and 'Folglio.'
“The guys at Strike Anywhere have this really nice approach to filmmaking, where they’ll enter a space and try to disturb it as little as possible. It comes from a deep respect for naturalism and a strong desire to create a low impact, comfortable atmosphere for their subject. More specifically, this means keeping our gear and crew size to a minimum, lighting for a 360 degree view and being able to roll at a moments notice."
"Normally, when approaching a longer form doc, there will be weeks and weeks for our subjects to become familiar and at ease with a bearded guy with a RED camera following their every move. In this case, we only had about 8 hours! So it was up to us to let David Patchen, the glass blower, do his thing, while trying to get stylish visuals to accompany the piece."
"It became a bit of a dance between myself, the glass blower and his assistant. David was doing super delicate work with all of this hot molten material, so he was moving really fast across the studio before it started to cool."
"When I’m shooting, I usually like to be on the wider side of the lens, so as to feel close to the subject and their material. Usually, somewhere between 25 and 35mm. And in this scenario, you have this blast furnace and all of this molten glass being thrown around at however many thousand degrees that stuff has to be at, so getting the camera close to the action proved to be a bit of a harrowing experience! There were a couple of close calls, but I always feel like if you don’t get a little bit of dirt on the lens, then you’re not close enough."
“While this was all happening, the directors, Mike and Barry, would be chatting casually to David about the process and love for his art. The Strike guys are all fantastic at promoting a natural conversational flow to the interviews, coaxing wonderfully honest sounding material from their subjects. All I had to do was just keep the camera rolling to make sure we got as much as possible for the narrative to work in the edit."
"It was a pretty simple setup from that point of view, with just one small 800w HMI light to boost the ambience a bit. Fortunately for me, there were some nice skylights above the workspace, which provided some really nice soft diffused light to his tools, like the his melting crucible and furnace which all had wonderful texture to them."
“David the glass blower, is a master of his craft and can pretty much do it blind. He and his assistant are so deliberate and confident with everything they do, moving around the space with the need for minimal communication. There was this one really cool part of the process where they take the raw material, which started off as a cylindrical 2” piece of glass of all different shade of colors. David then melts a 2’x2’ sheet out of it all, about 2” thick. When that sheet comes back out of the furnace, they roll it up, then stretch it out almost 30’ across the studio into thin rods with an incredible internal color."
"It was a pretty awesome thing to see first hand. That’s what made the Olavari pieces we did for 215McCann truly enjoyable. Witnessing all these unique crafts makers who are masters of their trade after years of dedication was definitely inspiring."
