Earth's Future Series

It's history, Jim, but not as we've known it.

Inspired by a book I read many years ago.  For more about that read On the Origin of Australis

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 Notes on the production stills:

In the first, of course, there's only one guy modeling all three people.  Change the clothes, change the hair, give them differnt props (phone, coffee, electrical cable) and drop them in front of a background shot from Sandy Hook, New Jersey.  What I was trying to do with this was get the effect of an on-set photographer's spur of the moment snapshot between takes.  Hence they're  slightly out-of-focus and the white on the The Prophet's shirt is blown out. 

In the second, again there's only one woman modelling here.  The soundstage is made up from pretty disparate elements: the stone wall is a bridge pier photographed at Ambridge, PA; the floor is part of the paint deck from the a scene shop in New Jersey; the snow was "painted" in; as was the green screen in the background.  While I was working on this image, I recalled that special effects people add little blue tracking dots in their green environments so that they have consistent tracking of important points however the camera moves; so I added blue "tracking dots" to the green screen for the compositors reference.  Oh, and that coat?  It isn't red with embroidery; it's blue and plain.  The border I "ripped off" from some bronze detail at Grand Central Terminal.

The last shot is nearly as it appeared in the camera, so it was pretty easy - except that I added the wallpaper, and the photographs framed on the wall.  The frames were extant, but not those pictures (course you can really only see one; believe me, the second one is all there, too).  As the character is supposed to be a photographer, I added the wall art so that his apartment would be dressed appropriately.  I thought that they might be his photos, but I guess they don't have to be.  Could belong to a friend.  This is also a small example of how my mind works when shooting these things: that drawer unit with the typewriter on top doesn't normally "live" there, so I moved it over to give the character some furniture and something to lean on.  I also had to dress behind the glass.  Then I put the books there as if he'd been reading them and casually left them in passing.  The books are original from the period.  Also: while the prints he's holding were blank when this photograph was taken, if you look closely you can see that there is some shadowing added so they seem to be actual, fresh-from-the-darkroom photos.