It turns out that Duff Goldman, owner of Charm City Cakes was who posed as the knife brandishing evil Uncle Tosso during today's first shoot. Duff had to dash off after his scenes to deliver cakes.

A half hour later, the first of seven of Keri's friends started arriving and in the early evening darkness, our living room exploded with costumes, props and make-up. We set up for a group photo to illustrate this passage from the Trixie History:

Trixie spent many horrible years under the thumb of her evil Uncle Tosso after her family was killed in a tragic Elephant Tight Rope accident.

Photo captions: (1) Working on make-up (2) Sad clown (3) Adam "Monkey" Krandle as the Tall man (4) Keri "Trixie" Burneston directs (5) The family (6) Closer in on the family (7) Reviewing images in camera (8) Prepping the tragic Elephant Tight Rope accident scene (9) Cianna watched this whole production from her high chair in the kitchen and giggled a lot.

No elephants were used for the accident scene because I'm going to composite the characters from these digital photo sessions using Photoshop into a diorama or background image in a style inspired by the circus photos of Edward J. Kelty and the opening of the film Moulin Rouge.

We've got at least one more shoot to do, and a bunch of silent film-style title slates to layout. The image sequence will debut at Trixie Little & The Evil Hate Monkey's Valentine's Day Cabaret on February 12th here in Baltimore. I've got to get crackin' and kick some digital sawdust.

- mike lee - baltimore