How the “How It’s Made” segment was made.

Once the producers decided to film a TV segment on my baskets, I got to work creating multiple pieces to show the steps of how I make a new basketry sculpture.  Each example piece was worked a little farther that the last, to be able to show a progression of the ‘make’.

First the designing:  I made a clay model of a new design, planning to weave a sheet of copper into the piece.  Next I made a cast of the clay out of fabric and glue. Then I worked a piece of copper.  So there were 3 examples:  clay, cast & copper.

During the filming day, I worked a new piece of clay to match the model; prepared a new cast of the already dried clay example to match the cast model; worked a duplicate sheet of copper to match the example.  There are other things occurring between these steps such as dry time for the clay, dry time & trimming of the cast and sealing the copper.  The whole thing could not be made in one day of filming, hence the need for pre-made examples.  In the end, the novel way I make design proposals with clay and casting did not show in the final segment.

It was a looong filming day!  The crew arrived at 7:30am and stayed until 11:30 that evening.  They did take breaks for food and once I even had to take a short catnap!

Mine was the first job they did with a brand new digital camera, which was huge!  (see the pics below)  Frequently they changed lens, which took about 15 minutes.  Each lens is about a foot square.

The memory cards each held 256 gb.  They had a 2" thick 3-ring binder full of pages with the cards from just that day’s filming.  The actual segment on the show was 4.5 minutes long.  Some of that time has been lost though - this remaining segment is 3 minutes long.  

It was a fun challenging day!

From the day I was first contacted, to the airing of the show in America, was 2 years.