Table Reading Marks Debut Of ’Man in Motion’

News from The Malibu Times of a new play about Muybridge:

By Jimy Tallal / Special to The Malibu Times

Posted on May 28, 2014 by MalibuTimesEditorial

In an unusual move, the new play, “Man in Motion,” written by local stage and television writer D. Paul Yeuell, will be introduced to its first live audience in the form of a table-reading at the Malibu Playhouse this Saturday.
Yeuell chose the format as “a good way to determine whether the material is ready for full production and maybe generate the interest of a repertory company with resources to get the play on its feet.”
Eleven actors will sit onstage facing the house and read directly from the script. Real-life Malibu married couple Jamey Sheridan and Colette Kilroy, both veteran actors, are taking on lead roles alongside a cast that includes TV/film actor Gil Bellows and eight others.

Kilroy plays a professional midwife “in an incredible predicament, being witness to the complications of the household.” Although she’ll be acting next to her real-life husband, she said, “Jamey and I will not rehearse together beforehand – we’ll see what happens in the group. I steer clear of talking about characters with actors, even my husband … For me, it’s best to discover in the playing together.”

Normally, a “table read” is a behind-the-scenes step in the pre-production process attended only by staff, with the actors bringing their characters to life for the first time behind closed doors. At this event, the audience will be folded into the process.

“It’s a great story that Paul skillfully unfolds, interweaving Muybridge’s debut of amazing footage of animals in motion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with his murder trial. The testimony at the trial is the device for telling what happened the night of the murder. It’s a great story, and that’s what draws me into projects,” said Malibu local and successful producer Randy Olson.

Yeuell hopes to learn from the live reading whether any parts are too long or too difficult, and gather feedback from the audience at the reception afterwards.
The production team is renting the Malibu Playhouse for the event on Saturday, May 31 at 6:00 p.m. Godmother of Malibu will cater the reception following the reading. Tickets are available online only for $25 at brownpapertickets. com/event/699090.

 

Posted here by Stephen Herbert

From Kingston boy to Google Doodle

Thursday, 8 May (this week) at 6pm I shall be giving  talk at Kingston Museum, Wheatfield Way, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2PS.

‘How did the young bookseller Ted Muggeridge from Kingston become renowned photographer Eadweard Muybridge of San Francisco, and how did Kingston Museum become the home of arguably the world’s most important Muybridge collection?’

and…

‘How is Muybridge’s work relevant to artists and the media of today?’

Find out on Thursday.

 

Posted here by Stephen Herbert

 

 

The T-Shirt Issue: Muybridge on show

The T-Shirt Issue ‘Muybridge Part Two’ at MAD, NYC

by Maude Churchill

‘Muybridge Part Two’

Art collective THE T-SHIRT ISSUE were born out of a frustration with the current approach to clothing design and their result is an innovative digital approach to apparel construction that uses a 3D construction technique to give them the freedom to create garments that begin with a concept. Their latest installation, Muybridge Part Two, is currently on show at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC. The exhibition is a study on temporal change in 3D: a bird in full flight is rigged, animated, and transported into T-shirts, and is inspired by Edward Muybridge’s photography from the late 1800′s which pioneered the capture of animal and human locomotion. Exhibitors alongside THE T-SHIRT ISSUE include Zaha Hadid, Frank Stella, Anish Kapoor and many more. The show continues until June 1.Museum of Arts and Design
The Jerome and Simona Chazen Building
2 Columbus Circle, New York City

http://www.highsnobiety.com/2014/01/28/the-t-shirt-issue-muybridge-pt-2/

Re-posted here by Stephen Herbert

Rumpus in Kingston

Nude beginnings: Riverside Kingston development to pay tribute to Kingston photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge

5:00am Friday 24th January 2014 in News By Ross Logan, Chief Reporter [YourLocalGuardian.co.uk]

Images taken by Eadweard Muybridge could soon be a familiar site along Kingston riverside.

The Riverside Kingston development this week. Muybridge’s images will be seen on the large white panel to the right of the picture

Artistic images of women posing nude for legendary photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge could soon become a familiar sight along Kingston’s riverside.

The company behind the new Riverside Kingston restaurant development, next to Kingston Bridge, has announced bold plans to commemorate one of the town’s most famous sons by emblazoning its building with stills from his Human Figures in Motion project, carried out in the mid 1880s.

The oversized black and white photographs would greet visitors coming into town from Richmond over Kingston Bridge, as well as those travelling along the Thames.

http://www.kingstontour.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/photographs/phone-boxes.html

Developers Canadian and Portland Estates hope that in time, the projection will become as recognisable a landmark as David Mach’s Out Of Order phone box sculpture in Old London Road.

Kingston-born Eadweard Muybridge broke new ground in photography

Greg Miles, head of promotions and animation at Canadian and Portland Estates, said: “Eadweard Muybridge was born and died in Kingston and became a pioneer of photography and the moving image.

“His work is internationally recognised and contributed hugely towards the development of film, which has a vast influence over our lives.

“Kingston owns one of the world’s largest collections of Muybridge’s images and we believe this is something Kingston should celebrate and we wanted to honour the beauty and importance of his work on our building.”

Phase one of Riverside Kingston is due to open in April, bringing five popular restaurant chains to the town for the first time – Cote, Busaba Eathai, CAU, Comptoir Libanais and Bill’s.

Muybridge is credited with revolutionising still photography through his famous motion sequence technique, which paved the way for motion pictures.

Despite the cultural nod to Kingston’s heritage, Kingston Society chairman Jennifer Butterworth was not impressed by the proposal to beam his work across the Thames.

She said: “What is being proposed will only make bad worse.

“It doesn’t matter if the ladies are nude or not.

“We objected to the Riverside sign [on top of the building] and we object to anything more making this site look like a cinema show.”

[end of article]

** So, several years after a major retrospective of Muybridge’s images graced the walls of the Tate Britain art gallery, his photographs are still objected to on the grounds that they represent a “cinema show”. Not only are we still fighting the prejudices against film as art, we’re back to the 1970s struggle to have photography recognized as art. It might not be appropriate to have these pictures on the site suggested, but the objectors will need to come up with some better reasons for rejecting the internationally renowned work of Kingston’s famous son.

Stephen Herbert

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/10959924.Nude_beginnings__Riverside_Kingston_development_to_pay_tribute_to_Kingston_
photography_pioneer_Eadweard_Muybridge/

Eadweard – Cast & Creators on Global News tv (Canada)

Sara Canning, who plays Flora

“Just based on the photographs [of Muybridge] I’ve tried to fund an essence of who this madman was …  I’ve done a lot of just staring into his eyes….” says co-writer and producer Josh Epstein, explaining on Global News tv how he tried to get a hold on Muybridge’s character and personality.

The seven-minute tv clip is here:

http://globalnews.ca/video/717068/eadweard-muybridge-cast-creators

More location photos soon…..

Posted here by Stephen Herbert

First location pix: indie ‘Eadweard’ movie

You (probably) saw it here first! Some location pix tweeted by Josh Epstein (co-producer) and Torrence Coombs. More to follow soon.

Re-posted here by Stephen Herbert

‘Eadweard’ influenced by Vancouver theatre scene

Photo credit to follow

Josh Epstein is co-producer of the Canadian Muybridge movie, and here’s his blog on preparation for this week’s shooting…

“The last few weeks working on our EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE movie have been an absolute rollercoaster.   Navigating making our first feature has presented an astounding amount of challenges, from raising (and securing!) the money to budgeting an epic period film with children, animals, artistic nudity, 50 locations, 40 actors, 100 extras, 400 period costumes, over 50 1880′s specialized cameras, a top notch film crew, a compound build at one location, and doing all that on a low indie budget and there’s no getting around paying for trucks, gas, security, insurance, meals, equipment.  All things that don’t actually improve your film but are essential for making a film.  We knew we had to be involved in every department to make this happen…. [read more]

http://www.motion58.com/?p=757

and some more here…

http://www.motion58.com/?p=642

Posted here by Stephen Herbert

Eklund on Muybridge

Michael Eklund is growing out his beard for his new role in the upcoming feature about early 20th century photographer and filmmaking pioneer, Eadweard Muybridge.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop , PNG

 

Hollywood North: Michael Eklund pioneers a new look

for Vancouver-shot feature Eadweard

By Mark Leiren-Young, Special to The Vancouver Sun June 27, 2013

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Hollywood+North+Michael+Eklund+pioneers+look+Vancouver+shot+feature+Eadweard/8588225/story.html#ixzz2Xh8jnAKM

If there was a Leo Award for “best beard,” actor Michael Eklund would have won by acclamation.

Instead, Eklund got to show off his old-style face bush when he recently accepted an award for Best Performance by a Male in a Feature Length Drama for his role in Errors of the Human Body at B.C.’s annual film and television prize party earlier in June.

Eklund was already riding high on the success of The Call — Oscar winner Halle Barry’s surprise box office smash — where he played a serial killer who kidnaps Abigail Breslin (an Oscar nominee for Little Miss Sunshine).

Said Eklund, “Yes, they are both as beautiful and cool in real life.”

Both movies — along with a third film, Ferocious — debuted in theatres in the last three months.

Talking to The Sun in the lobby of the Westin Bayshore during the awards ceremonies, Eklund explained that his current facial fur is meant for his new role in the upcoming feature about early 20th century photographer and filmmaking pioneer, Eadweard Muybridge, which goes to camera in and around Vancouver on Canada Day.

The movie is directed by Kyle Rideout and produced by Josh Epstein, who co-wrote the script. Eklund said the low budget project was love at first read.

“When they first sent me the script I had no idea who they were or who this Eadweard Muybridge character was. After I turned the last page of the script I felt I needed to know everything about this mysterious sweaty-toothed madman, as well as the talented artists who wrote it and sent it to me.

“You do not read too many scripts like this. Every actor knows that feeling when they find it. For me, it was beautiful yet dangerous, soiled and yet whitened. All these words also describe the man who was Eadweard Muybridge. I was ready to sink my own sweaty teeth upon the goal to find out more.”

Currently known as Eadweard, the film will feature over 150 extras, 40 actors, 50 locations, period costumes, animals, children and “a stage coach squished with passion,” Eklund said. “The word ‘collaborative’ sums it up perfectly as the whole community seems to be involved.”

Epstein said that not only did the local film community embrace the making of the movie, the theatre community did as well.

“We’re making a $3 million dollar movie on a very, very low budget so we’ve been getting amazing resources from a lot of the theatre companies in town: The now defunct Playhouse, the Electric Company, the Arts Club, Studio 58, Playhouse Theatre, Chemainus the Renegade Arts Society, and also theatre lighting people and costume people,” Epstein said when interviewed last weekend at the Jessie Awards, where the popular stage actor (last seen in the Arts Club’s remount of The Craigslist Cantata) performed a song-and-dance number celebrating the Vancouver theatre scene.

“It’s sort of a mesh of film and theatre people helping us out. It’s a highly ambitious, epic indie film. Very epic.”

A native of Saskatoon, Eklund recalled falling in love with the movies as a five-year-old when his mom took him to a Sunday matinee, “planting the seed of magic inside of me.”

Determined to perform like his matinee idols Eklund spent the next decade auditioning for school plays — and not getting cast.

Unable to convince the world he was an actor, Eklund enrolled in art school to study painting. It didn’t take long before he was dropping out, packing his stuff and his dreams in a U-Haul and heading West to Vancouver to take a shot at stardom.

Eklund credited persistence and “the power of being so naive” for landing a top agent despite a complete lack of acting experience.”

The agent wasn’t the only one who saw potential — practically every casting agent in B.C. did.

Over the last few years Eklund has been featured on almost every major series shot here including Smallville, Supernatural, Intelligence and Alcatraz.

Eklund saw his latest role as a chance to explore the origins of his passion for moviemaking.

“I discovered that Eadweard Muybridge was a man who could stop time, a man obsessed with freezing motion. His work unknowingly was creating and inspiring the basis for moving pictures. He was the pioneer of film. And without him and his work the actual film we are making based on him could not have been made.”

Posted here by Stephen Herbert

‘Muybridge’ shooting next week

Sara Canning           Getty Images

From The Hollywood Reporter:

“The Vampire Diaries actress Sara Canning, Ian Tracey and Jodi Balfour have joined the cast of the untitled psychological drama centered on Eadweard Muybridge.

Michael Eklund is starring in the Canadian indie, which is being directed by Kyle Rideout and produced by Josh Epstein. Rideout and Epstein were behind Wait for Rain, a short that won best science fiction/fantasy at last year’s Comic-Con International Film Festival. The Muybridge project is their first feature. Also joining the cast are Christopher Heyerdahl and Torrance Combs. The movie begins principal photography next week in Vancouver…….

Canning will play Muybridge’s wife, while Balfour will be one of the photographer’s models who became the focus of some of his very first nudes. Tracey will portray the founder of Stanford University who enlists Muybridge’s services to win a famous bet over whether a horse had all four hooves off the ground while galloping. Canning stars in Primeval: New World, the North American version of the hit BBC sci-fi show. Tracey has appeared in the popular Canadian sci-fi show Continuum and appeared in Man of Steel and A&E’s Bates Motel. Balfour is one of the stars of CBC’s acclaimed show Bomb Girls.”

Gary Oldman to film ‘Flying Horse’?

From indiewire.com

“Gary Oldman Eyeing Ralph Fiennes & Benedict Cumberbatch For His Sophomore Directorial Effort ‘Flying Horse’

NEWS: BY KEVIN JAGERNAUTH

It has been seventeen years since Gary Oldman dropped his feature length directorial debut and cult fave “Nil By Mouth,” but he hasn’t yet followed it up anything. Not that he’s been short of ideas. Back in 2011, he said he wanted to team up Colin Firth for an unnamed remake, while in early 2012 he said he had a project about a sex addict he wanted to direct. Well, the good news is that Oldman does have a new directorial effort cooking, and the surprising part is that’s none of those.
Instead, it’s a biopic of Eadweard Muybridge called “Flying Horse,” and even more, he’s seeking his “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” co-stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Ralph Fiennes to star. Penned by Oldman, the movie would tell the story of the photographer instrumental in helping to develop motion pictures. But the movie will focus on the more tabloid part of his life, with Muybridge mudering a theater critic who was had an affair with his wife, and fathered a child in the process. Scandal!

If all goes to plan, Fiennes would take the role of Muybridge, Oldman the smaller role of his attorney and Cumberbatch as the adulterous Harry Larkyns. Scheduling and all that fun stuff needs to be worked out, but the aim is to start shooting in early 2014 (which is also when Cumberbatch is due on the set of Guillermo Del Toro’s “Crimson Peak”).

But it’s exciting news that Oldman is getting back behind the camera, for a story that also inspired an opera by Philip Glass entitled “The Photographer.”

[Posted here by Stephen Herbert] see also:

https://ejmuybridge.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/michael-eklund-to-star-in-muybridge-movie/