Yesterday I went up to the house of a local flint-knapper to shoot some footage for my exhibit.  My goal is to have a 2-2:30 minute video that briefly shows the process of making an arrowhead.  Another Boulder resident, a retired local news journalist, came with me to actually do the filming.  Thank goodness.  I could have made some sort of video with the museum's supplies, but having a professional do it means that the final product will be much better than anything I can produce.

It took about two hours.  The flint-knapper wanted to be as anonymous as possible, so we had to make sure his face was cropped out of every shot.  (That's also why I'm not naming him here.)  He talked about the local stone and demonstrated various techniques; I did my best to pay attention since I'll have to narrate the film.  It was pretty entertaining, but there were a couple  of "uh oh" moments.  At one point, the flintknapper managed to cut himself pretty bad, so blood was getting on his tools and the rock.  He wanted to keep going, but I eventually wheedled him into washing the blood off so that "the kids won't be distracted" - because of course if a fourth grader sees a man bleeding, he'll pay attention to the gore and not to the educational content.

I couldn't be gone from the museum for too long; while traffic has slowed somewhat as the season ends, we're still getting more visitors than usual because of the closed national parks. I spent the afternoon writing up the script for the video and hopefully it'll get through editing sometime next week so that I can record the words.

Now if only I could get my sign together.  I've been working with a company the park manager recommended, but they're very slow to respond and after over two weeks, I still haven't gotten a quote from them.  I don't see how I'm going to get this exhibit finished before I leave at the rate we're currently going!