Screen Dance journal

Week 1: 28/9/17

In our first session of screendance, we began by asking and answering the question “what is screendance?” and “what makes a ‘good’ screendance?” We began by watching two examples films ‘Slow dance’ and ‘Cycles’ and compared what was similar and different about the two pieces as well as discussing what worked well, and what effect the camera had on us as an observer. I enjoyed watching both films. I really liked the use of effects and editing of the films. The first film I liked how the slow motion effect created a more dramatic relationship between the man and the woman. It reminded me the moments you feel when something dramatic happens in your life and the moment when ‘time stood still’. I feel this piece used this concept and made it quite comical in the way the people in the bar are fighting and hurting one another, but it is put in the foreground of the love story. The music juxtaposes the fighting, but enhances the love story. Separately, I feel the two ideas contradict each other: love and hate. However, when you put it altogether with the music and slow everything down, it adds a comical effect, which would not normally arise with these two themes. In the second film, the narrative wasn’t as obvious to begin with. When the piece got closer to the end everything then revealed itself and all made more sense. I enjoyed the element of surprise at the end. The crosscutting of location was very effective. This gave the film an element of time without being a long film. The movement in all the clips was repeated and adapted to the location. 

Slow Dance from joe cobden on Vimeo.

We then got set the task to create a screendance film as a whole class in two hours using a door as a starting point. We began by saying what ideas came into our heads when looking at the door. I brought up the idea that I could see a long line of people jumping in unison through the door. We then tested this and some of the other ideas out to see what worked and what didn’t. From this idea we liked the image of two people jumping either side of the door. This then developed further into the two people having a contest to see who could jump the highest, making it quite comical. We then looked at how many people could fit through the door at once. We discovered the door was not very stable, so it was only safe for two people to go through at once. Once we knew this we got into pairs and thought of ways we could get through the door. An idea that was raised was the idea of fighting: one person wanting to go one way, the other wanting to go another. The fighting soon became too structured and forced, so we looked at what it would be like dragging people through the door, and showing how hard and physically demanding it is to move a ‘dead weight’. We decided as a group we wanted a unison section in the piece. Someone thought instantly of the unison movement of a chorus line. Each of us created a step, which we then taught and learnt from everyone, and put them all together to create the Unison choreography. We wanted to keep this ‘line’ element to the unison section, so we travelled the choreography through the door in a line. The piece, although put together in a short amount of time, showed quite a few interesting ideas, and helped to teach me more about making choreography specifically to go on camera.

I have watched some examples of screen dance to clarify to myself what makes a screen dance rather than a dance music video or dance film. One screen dance that I watched was Pas De Duex Directed by Julia Cain. This was a 60-second film that explores the concept of weight in classical ballet. I liked the fact the film had a contrast between when the camera was in and out of focus. The focused shots drew me in towards the movement of the feet and made me see how hard and technical ballet is. The focused shots made the ballet seem more weighted as you could see the clarity and the extension of the feet. Whereas, with the out of focused shots, it made the movement had a 'dream' like feel, making it seem lighter and therefore, the movement seemed less weighted. It was as if the dancers were dancing on 'Cloud 9'. The location and costuming of the film was interesting to me as it switched between a white space with the dancers in ballet shoes, to an outside wood location where the dancers were barefooted. The pointe shoes stood out in the white space, and provided the viewer with the definition of the movement and made the movement a more solid. This contrasted with the other location because the background was rather busy with leaves everywhere, the simplicity of a bare foot was clearer in this location and make the movement of the développé look like it was emerging and extending from the trees.

Pas De Deux (60-second screendance) from Julia Cain - Wide Eye Video on Vimeo.