It’s harder than it sounds.

My wife and I (and now our newborn) have a pact made in spit and sealed with a handshake and a funny dance that every year will try to produce a unique Holliday card. They tend to have my dark sense of humor (my wife is a bit dark herself) and rarely escape offending at least one of the recipients – though that is a byproduct more than an intention.

This was last year’s card. Yep, that’s me hanging there suspended by my wife’s pinching fingers. “Have a very wedgie Christmas,” I think is what we wrote inside. Kind of cutsie. Fairly milk toast if you know what I mean. Still. It was fun and people seemed to like it.

A year later (that’s this year) we have a six week old baby, my wife has had three emergency surgeries to fix complications from the labor. I’m writing this blog. I’m in pre-production on a feature film I’m writing and directing. My wife and I are starting a new publishing company with our first project currently in the layout stage set to ship off to the printers in two weeks. I’m leaving for Japan in 7 weeks to shoot a documentary of a USO tour. Oh, and it would be nice if I could get one dang minute of peace to read the manual from my new Canon 5D MII!!! Ahem. Sorry. So anyhow. This year we would just have to skip the Holliday card tradition, right?

And disappoint my Granny who, nigh on three years ago, burned her assisted living apartment down in a mad rush to destroy the card before her mahjong pals could see it? Heck no, Joe!

It was time to dip into the prop box.

Here’s the idea: Heavy Metal rocker wannabe and his wheelchair bound gal have a love child. They don’t have a lot of cash, so they decorate the tree with toilet paper and crumbled up ads for the local Mexican supermarket. The only two ornaments they own are a miniature Flying V guitar and a robot made of blown glass. You see, he is the guitar, all rock and flash, a man-child incapable of understanding the complexities of suffering, blind to the world beyond his own reflection. She’s the glass robot: fragile, but going through life void of emotions. She is relieved to be loved, but can’t love in return. She has dreams of being a star, but the star on the tree is just a crumbled up piece of toilet paper, only good for cleaning up after life’s excrement.

Also, I thought seeing a baby in a funny wig might make my friends laugh.

The tricky part was that I wanted it too look like it was a bad photograph, but still look interesting visually. An intentional simulation of an accidentally bad photograph.

I’m not sure if I pulled it off. It’s a multi layered challenge. It’s the acting, the props, and the lighting. The lighting was probably the trickiest part.

I think this was a good first try, but I’ve only just scratched the surface. I’m going to revisit the idea of photographs well lit, acted, and staged to look bad in the future. It intrigues me. Does it intrigue you? Let us know in the comments below.

Happy Holidays from Nice!

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