My good friend Joey D (check out his art, for real) wanted to propose to his wonderful girlfriend (and now fiancee) Jen so we spent an entire day running around Chicago with a Nikon D90 I had for the week, and made this video of Joey walking around the city in a box. The second part is this amazing motion graphics animation he made where he actually proposes, but that might be kept private. Also, DJ Marco Morales helped with the final audio mix.

A lot of this process involved me setting up the shot and yelling across the street for Joey to start walking, at which point he would blindly walk a straight line by looking at his feet and following lines in the sidewalk. Then I would yell at him to stop once he was out of frame. There were also times when we’d shoot in the middle of the street in light traffic, so during a break in traffic I’d run out and set up the shot, then pick up the tripod and get out of the street when traffic came, then wait for a longer break and run back in, put the tripod back where it was and quickly shoot the scene, then run off to safety again.

The best parts were outtakes where Joey would turn too soon and walk into walls or when we were at the bean he walked into like five people. The bean was also great because I’d be shooting from a distance and could hear all these people around me saying “look at that guy in a box!! what the hell is that?”

At the least this can stand alone as a walking tour of my favorite city on this planet, an ode to Chicago. ♡

UPDATE: Ha! Joey is doing the dew! So famous. But you can see the box and little glimpses of the second part of the adventures of box boy:

UPDATE: Part II of The Proposal! I had nothing to do with this part, but it’s amazing and I wanted to share. Joey secretly scanned Jennifer’s artwork and then animated it all.

The Proposal from Joey D. on Vimeo.

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Tags Chicago collaboration make-believe