I grew up in Waukegan, Illinois–learned to ride my bike on it’s sidewalks, developed my first friendships and crushes on it’s playgrounds, began to love nature in it’s parks and preserves. I also learned to love reading in it’s downtown library, a sprawling and boxy 1960’s artifact filled to the brim with dusty old books and strange statues. It was here, around the age of 12, that Ray Bradbury stole my heart. I picked up one of his collections of short stories of the shelf–maybe it was October Country?–opened it and was hooked. His poetic prose and vibrant imagery were like a drug to my young mind, and I devoured most of his writings in the space of a couple months, immediately aping his style in my messy notebooks, desperately trying to write a story as exciting and melodic and moody as one of his.
As I grew I never lost my passion for Bradbury–it only deepened as I began to learn how much of a creative connection he had to Waukegan, the place where I also became an artist. Recently I discovered this interview with him that was recorded shortly before he died in 2012, and I knew I had to make a video.
Here’s the video I made, featuring audio from the interview edited to footage I captured of the actual places in Waukegan Bradbury is describing. I shot the video on a GoPro HERO 4 Black set to 120 frames per-second to achieve the slow motion effect, mounted on a motorized gimbal to smooth out the footage.
This film was an honor and a delight to make, and has been featured on a couple of Ray Bradbury and Waukegan Facebook pages. I owe so much to Ray and his wonderful life and writing, and I’m so glad I could finally create something to pay him a little tribute.