This was a difficult shoot. I'm super happy with the concept - I think it's a lot of fun. As for execution, it was difficult to get the hoops to stay in place (without bumping them from one shot to the next). Also, the changing sunlight conditions are distracting, but that's an unavoidable risk of shooting on a partly cloudy day. (I didn't have much choice - I wanted to satisfy my creative impulses while I had the chance; which in this case happened to be last minute and first thing in the morning, before I even had my breakfast! It was also brutally hot with high humidity, so I was looking forward to the part of the shoot when I could take my clothes off).
My favorite part of this concept is the idea that the "scientist" enters the portal only to find that when he emerges, his clothes have been unable to make the trip. Call me a pervert if you want - I don't care - but I'm intrigued by the idea in science-fiction or fantasy of any kind of teleportation or transformation technology, or supernatural powers, that have the ability to manipulate organic matter but not textile fabrics. So, you can teleport over large distances, dissolve into mist, transform into a bat - take your pick - but when it comes time to change back, you find that your body has made the journey, but your clothes have not.
Now you're (more or less) unexpectedly naked in a potentially embarrassing or inconvenient situation! But you have a really good, practical reason to be - it's not the result of any deliberate, perverted intention, but just an unforeseen (or unavoidable) side-effect of the technology or powers you've used. So you're a little bit more justified; at least, the responsibility isn't entirely yours. Fictional stories do sometimes acknowledge this contingency - usually for comedic effect - but rarely do they take full advantage of its potential and the opportunity to introduce and showcase nudity in their medium, undoubtedly for fear of censure. But that's something I'd like to see more of.
I realize that it's a bit late for me to be noticing this now, but it has just occurred to me that it would probably look a whole lot more natural if the hoops were angled with their nearest points toward the center (rather than the edges) of the frame, so that I'd be entering the plane of the hoop facing the camera, and not the plane facing away from the camera. I don't know if that was an effective explanation; this seems like something that would be better demonstrated visually. Ah well.
We'll finish by lifting the magic of the teleport hoops, and turning them back into regular hula hoops. Reminds me of a circus show! This last video is a run-through of me circling and crawling through the hoops, just for the hell of it.
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