Help with skating story :)

[davincisop]

My roommate is in a photography class and she got an assignment for her class that involves ghost stories and motion. I suggested she go to the ice rink and get some photos there (doesn't hurt that my rink is supposedly haunted  >). Anyways, she needs to come up with a story to go with it and I wanted to see if there were any creative people here that could think of any jumping off points! I suggested a figure skater buying a pair of used skates from a shop that she later finds out belonged to a deceased skater and are haunted by the spirit of that skater.

Here is the brief:
In this assignment you will tell the story of a haunting... think ghosts, ghouls, and goblins! In relating the story of your haunting, you will use shutter speed to create examples of blurred, frozen and panned motion where the technique you choose adds to the meaning or impact of the image. You might use motion to create a feeling of time passing (before, during, and after the haunting, for example) or the sense that a series of sequential events has occurred.

                                           

Make sure your use of motion in this assignment is decisive and intentional. Frozen motion should be completely frozen while preserving the viewer's understanding that the subject is moving. Likewise, your blurred motion shots should show noticeable motion blur. However, the parts of your image that are not moving should be sharp—no camera shake! Only one more restriction: no photos of cars!

[FigureSpins]

Good luck to your roommate!  That's a tough assignment, but I like your Haunted Skates idea!  


The easy way out is to have the skates turn her into a superstar skater instantly.
The cheesier thing would be for her to start hearing the voice of the former owner and think she's going mad.
(More cool if the former owner has a eastern-european accent!)

[davincisop]

well it's a photography project so no one would be able to hear the eastern european accent lol.

And she was thinking of using me for the project, but she doesn't realize that my stuff isn't that impressive.... I can do a sad waltz jump and that's about it for jumps... spins though would look neat on a slow shutter speed she and I are scheming, and if worse comes to worse I have a 13 year old buddy who is working on triples I can probably get to pose for her lol.

[Isk8NYC]

Ooo...can she do double-exposure of you and this 13 year old to emphasize the "ghostly takeover" or "presence"?

[SillyAdultSkater]

Girl buys skates, doesn't understand what drives her to skate every single day and why her skating is improving so much. She really feels like a completely different person when on ice. Then a coach notices the skates seem to be just like those from a skater who had an unfortunate accident on the day of a big competition. Turns out the original owner of the skates was the kind to not let death stand in the way of doing nationals...   Another thing the girl doesn't understand is why a crazy old lady is coming to watch her skate every day until she's told this is the psychic voodoo priest mother of the original skater who did a ritual to call her daughter's spirit up, or the girl is told of the posession by some crazy old lady on the bus/street who tells her she will not have rest until she competes. Also, the girl tries to sell the skates when her grades begin to suffer but in a various series of strange coincidences, no one ever buys the skates. Meanwhile, girl's appliances all act weird. First the microwave sparks, then various lamps break, then her cell phone dies and her computer keeps crashing whenever she tries to skip a practice to play farmville on facebook or something. Eventually the girl has no choice but to "accept" the mission. We see her skate a large competition doing triples eventually, less than a year after she bought the skates and first stepped on the ice *grin*. Of course, we don't actually see her skate, we see the deceased skater.

Alternatively, girl's coach dies but doesn't stop coaching her...  

Or,  possibly, a bunch of skaters at a sleepover get together to do a spiritual seance conjuring up the spirit of a high level skater who died under suspicious circumstances. They didn't think it worked, but one of them got posessed...

BTW I think instructables has a how-to on a fake tombstone.

[davincisop]

Girl buys skates, doesn't understand what drives her to skate every single day and why her skating is improving so much. She really feels like a completely different person when on ice. Then a coach notices the skates seem to be just like those from a skater who had an unfortunate accident on the day of a big competition. Turns out the original owner of the skates was the kind to not let death stand in the way of doing nationals...   Another thing the girl doesn't understand is why a crazy old lady is coming to watch her skate every day until she's told this is the psychic voodoo priest mother of the original skater who did a ritual to call her daughter's spirit up, or the girl is told of the posession by some crazy old lady on the bus/street who tells her she will not have rest until she competes. Also, the girl tries to sell the skates when her grades begin to suffer but in a various series of strange coincidences, no one ever buys the skates. Meanwhile, girl's appliances all act weird. First the microwave sparks, then various lamps break, then her cell phone dies and her computer keeps crashing whenever she tries to skip a practice to play farmville on facebook or something. Eventually the girl has no choice but to "accept" the mission. We see her skate a large competition doing triples eventually, less than a year after she bought the skates and first stepped on the ice *grin*. Of course, we don't actually see her skate, we see the deceased skater.

Alternatively, girl's coach dies but doesn't stop coaching her...  

Or,  possibly, a bunch of skaters at a sleepover get together to do a spiritual seance conjuring up the spirit of a high level skater who died under suspicious circumstances. They didn't think it worked, but one of them got posessed...

BTW I think instructables has a how-to on a fake tombstone.

Thank you so much!

To everyone, my roommate is extremely grateful for ALL your suggestions! I'm forwarding them to her.

Right now we're trying to find a time to get her and I to the rink.

[Clarice]

Tell her to read "The Red Shoes".  It's a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.  It's pretty creepy, and has elements that I think could be adapted to a skating story.