The Hard Boiled Egg
Details
Name: The Hard Boiled Egg
My Role: Cinematographer / Projection Designer
Performed: 8th-9th October 2022
Made For: University of York Drama Society (DramaSoc)
"Written between the years of his birth and the years of his death, Ionesco’s ‘The Hard Boiled Egg’ is an absurd monologue play exploring life, death, love, loss and how to boil a hard boiled egg. Or maybe it’s just a bit silly."
~ Official Description for 'The Hard Boiled Egg'
Despite being written back in the 1960s, our production of Eugène Ionesco's absurdist monologue, The Hard Boiled Egg,was the first time the entire piece had been performed publicly. Or, in other words, it was a world premiere. Having been written as neither a play nor film script, but a strange mix of the two, our version of the show was approached from the format of multimedia. This is where I came in. As cinematographer for The Hard Boiled Egg, I was in charge of shooting/sourcing all of the filmed elements needed for this surreal performance, and then also served as the projection operator on show nights.
In the end, it took me just under a month to source and edit all of the footage that I required for the show, which included fish and sheep that were set on fire (through visual effects), a saucepan floating in space, and, of course, a two headed eagle. I had to draw on all my filmmaking knowledge to pull off this aspect of the show - greenscreen, compositing, stop-animation, 5-shot whip-pans, and even some full CGI footage.
For my combined work on both The Hard Boiled Egg and Pomona, I received the award for 'Best Innovator' at the DramaSoc Autumn 2022 awards!
All in all, I absolutely loved working on this insane show, and enjoyed working with it's most incredible company.
