The Final Cut

I seem to have spent most of my time this summer (in between cutting silhouettes at a record number of weddings) cooped up in the editing room with Andi, putting finishing touches to the film Silhouette Secrets. 

Silhouette Secrets is a one-hour indie TV documentary in which a modern-day silhouette artist (me) takes a journey back in time to explore the history of his shadowy art, asking the question “Where did it come from?”. On the way he meets the world’s fastest silhouette artist, who challenges him to a duel of scissors!  The journey takes him from a windswept seaside pier - on the north coast of Wales - to an Audi showroom in Houston, Texas, and finishes with an intriguing answer to his question

Charles meets Cindi Harwood Rose,

the world’s fastest silhouettist, and prepares to duel.

The editing process culminated in a private screening of the still-unfinished film in my studio, to a select audience of artist friends. This turned out to be an important final stage. They gave us some fairly direct feedback, which we took on board, and which resulted (I think) in a much better film.

I am happy to report that the film is now finished and ready to show. 

People keep asking “When can I see it?”

Well, the answer is “As soon as we find a TV channel to show it… ”

The hunt is on for a TV sale. Do you, by any chance, know any TV executives interested in quirky and original arts-type documentaries? If so, an introduction would be much appreciated.

In the meantime we plan to enter the film to a number of film festivals. We’ve already had our first success: Silhouette Secrets has been accepted for screening at the Marbella Film Festival (7 - 11th October) where it’s been entered into the Best Documentary section. Would you like to join us there by any chance? If you know anybody in the area do please forward this email to them. If we are successful there - next stop, Cannes!

Charles gets a lesson in how to use a nineteenth-century
silhouette-making machine, known as a physiognotrace. 

Making a film has been an unexpectedly wonderful experience, and has taken me well outside my comfort zone. I’ve loved every minute of it, from finding myself in front of a camera for the first time, to the long hours spent in the editing suite. As well as the film we’ve made a number of short “Silhouette Snippets” which will be released to the film's Facebook page over the next few weeks. One of these snippets - made from off-cuts of the film - has been turned into a 3-minute promotional video for The Roving Artist and will soon appear on the front page of my new website.

I will let you know how we get on in Marbella. In the meantime I am open to suggestions for private screenings - either on their own or as part of a larger event - perhaps combined with a talk on silhouettes or a silhouette workshop. Please do get in touch if you have an event coming up where this might work.

As usual I will be on The Roving Artist stand at the Square Meal show in Old Billingsgate later this month (23rd & 24th September) so do pop by if you want to talk more about the film, or any other aspect of my work as a silhouette artist.

Arrest of an artist

I hope you had a good Easter break and are enjoying the great weather. This is the newsletter I sent to business contact yesterday, but I thought some friends and family might enjoy it too.

While in America last year, filming for the documentary ‘Silhouette Secrets’, we visited Philadelphia to study a 200-year-old automatic silhouette-making machine. While there we met a friend of mine for a drink one evening, a local silhouette artist called Ted Stuessy. I had corresponded with Ted for some time, and liked the look of his work, but had never actually met him.

While chatting, together with film crew and director in a downtown-Philadelphia bar, I learned to my surprise that his day job is Chief of Police at the local New Jersey Police Department in Philadelphia. This was quite a surprise, and not at all what I expected. Stranger still, I discovered he had taught himself to cut silhouettes by studying the profile ‘mug shots’ routinely taken of arrested suspects. These photographs formed a ready library of subjects for him to practice on during breaks and have enabled him to refine his skill to a high degree. 

This revelation caused the conversation to go in a bizarre direction and - I can’t quite recall why - we soon found ourselves speculating whether or not I would be able to cut a silhouette wearing a pair of handcuffs. Not the traditional cowboy-style cuffs, with a generous amount of chain, but the modern New-Jersey-Police kind which lock the wrists closely together and allow hardly any movement at all. I was convinced I could do this, but nobody else there believed me.

So Andi (the director) jokingly asked Ted if he would be kind enough to have me arrested by NJPD the next day so we could try it out. To all of our great surprise Ted answered “Sure, we could do that, what time is good for you?”

The result is this little 2-minute video, which I think you will enjoy: 

I hope you agree I proved my point!

I’ve really no idea if there’s any future for a silhouette-cutting-while-handcuffed act in the world of corporate entertainment, but then again you never really know. Stranger things have happened.