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At the end of each academic quarter, the Film program at RIT has its department screenings. As I'd done since freshman year, I would create a bunch of original artwork for the screenings program booklets. These booklets list information about the films to be shown each day, and also typically contain information about each evening's party. This quarter (Fall '99) was no different, but Tom Vullo, the head of the student screenings comittee, got together with me fairly early in the game and we came up with a whole plan of attack for this quarter's booklets.

Each day's book would feature a 'substandard' cover and handwritten notes between me and Tom, and it would become a running gag. The first day's cover was a crude sketch in marker and pencil - it sucked, but intentionally so. The second day's cover was intended to be the result of the previous night's party, thus the cover was a quick sketch on a 7-11 napkin. Each cover featured 'paperclipped' to it an earnest, hopeful note from myself and harsh comments in return from Tom. The payoff was to be this fully realized cover for the third (and final) day. I wanted it to look extremely polished, and very influenced by Art-Deco design... In fact, I wanted the image to look like it was created circa 1935.

The camera on the cover is a Bolex - a 16mm film camera that does not record sound, nor run synchronously with any sound equipment. It's not really meant to. It's a workhorse that runs off a windup-driven spring, holds 3 swappable lenses on a front turret, and will accomodate about 100 feet (2.5 minutes) of film.

I created the artwork in Photoshop. I started by roughing out the shapes of the camera in grey. The idea, in keeping with Deco styling, was to build from primitive shapes. I worked almost entirely with rectangles and circles (except for the turret arm). Once complete, I began adding tone to broad areas. All shading was added in a second pass, on multiple layers (set to Multiply), as black airbrush wipes (with a huge, soft brush) within simple selections. More complex airbrushing was necessary for the lens elements and areas like the turret arm. After that, it was a simple matter to add more Deco styling to the background, creating a sun shape, boxes and rays.

In addition to what you see here (this is solely the artwork), the cover featured a fictional quote that read "The Bolex: three eyes into the human soul," and was attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Tom and I knew that to make the payoff good, even a beautiful design had to have something screwy within - The Jefferson quote was Tom's idea, and on the final cover, his handwritten note to me read as follows:

"Steve- What's your problem? First, Jefferson never once saw a Bolex. Second, though this is a nice design, it would have been much better for day 1. Just don't even talk to me anymore."

Everyone loved it.