Screen Dance Journals

Week 9: 30/11/17

This week is our final week of filming. In preparation to this session I had to ensure I washed the wedding dress to make it seem just as clean as it was at the beginning of filming, and I had to wear the same underneath the dress to keep the continuity of filming.  At the beginning of the session we looked over the footage from the last week and worked out what needed re-filming or what needed to be added or changed. We decided the looking element of the film didn’t work with the rest of the footage. Although we liked this idea up until now, the looking was slightly out of place now, so we felt like there was no need for that to be in the film anymore. Once wee took that out there was a lot of things that needed adding to the piece to try and get all the material in the film that we wanted, and to try and get all the dancers in the film. We discussed how and who was going to perform the unison material, as this is material most people had performed before and would be able to perfect in the short time frame they had.

I went over all of my material we were going to re-film to make sure when I went out in the cold to film, I was ready and could get straight into filming. As soon as we got outside, we went straight on with the material, starting with the floor material. This time the camera was extremely close to us while we rolled. This was more interesting as you got to see the different textures, such as my skin, the branches, the path and the wedding dress.  The lighting when we filmed was really nice as well. The sun was out both days we filmed, however, this week the sun is reflecting off our dresses, and although in some shots this is an issue, this rolling shot it lifts the light of the whole shot so it looks nice. The fast section we decided to keep it mainly on the path, using the slopes ever so slightly, but not making it the main feature of the shot.

After watching some of the footage back on the camera, we were happy that we had shot material that could be used in the film. We had finally filmed all the footage for our film, and we could finally begin editing next week, to create our film in time for the showing.

Aqueous from David Gwynn on Vimeo.

Aqueous by David Gwynn is a lovely screendance that uses the theme of water to link all of his clips and images. It begins with the female dancing underwater and jumps to a dancer dancing on land beside a river, and then to dancing on ice for example. I really like this piece as I like how the clips are related to each other, but they are not the same, and create both similar and contrasting textures within the choreography and the locations.  The link of the water is similar to how we have used Kizzy within our film. Kizzy is the link between the different characters and gives the film more of an order than just being completely random characters.

Screen Dance Journal

Week 8: 23/11/17

Prior this session, we filmed all of our material in a green are behind the Contemporary Arts building and send our footage to Anna for her to edit ready for this session. We started this session by watching the film and discussing what works and what didn’t work. The location itself we liked and it allowed for lots of possibilities, however, it was just the camera angles and the actual material in the space that was the issue. Some of the costumes worked in the space, such as the wedding dresses. The flowing material worked well against the green grass, and the sharp edges to the bushes and walls.

This was our first session filming in costume with Anna. Some of this footage we captured could be used in the final film we create. Before we began we had to get changed into our costumes and pick costumes to wear for the piece that didn’t work in the footage we shot for homework. I made sure that I took not what I wore under my wedding dress, as I wanted to make sure I kept the continuity while filming so we didn’t have to re-film any shots that do look good next week. We used two cameras when filming so we could get two different perspectives. The higher angle was nice to get a wider shot, with everything and everyone in. This worked well for my beginning floor section as you could see the detail and the movement of the fingers, and you could also get the volume and the layers of the wedding dress, especially as we were sitting down. When filming the rolling shot, it was important to position ourselves as dancers correctly because if we didn’t, there would have been different spacing’s between us. If the space between us was too close, we often found that we were rolling on each other’s dresses, which then stopped the person from being able to move.

When filming the slow line section, the material looked better with the camera really close to us and moving through our dancing bodies. We made a decision whist rehearsing the material to focus on our hands. Focusing on the hands made the movement more intriguing as it made the viewer wonder what we were looking at, and why it was so captivating.

For the fast moving section we decided to really use the space, and to travel it quite a lot. The location we were filming at had grass slopes leading down to the path. We decided to really uses these slopes to run up and across on the fast section to add some more levels to the piece. We found this very tricky to film, as there were lot of moments of empty space because we were using the whole of the location. We still wanted to have the camera moving through us really quickly to make sure we got the movement of the dresses and to make the material more interesting and would make the material seem even quicker.

Screen Dance Journals

Week 7: 16/11/17

In this week’s session, we wanted to look at locations to film our pieces. Our homework this week was to film in different locations and camera angles for our movement. To begin the session, we watched the footage we took, and discussed what worked and what didn’t work within the shots. From my solo, the group said that they liked the depth of my solo, and they felt like the movement could be developed further and heightened if more dancers were involved. I had to teach Sarah and Kayleigh my solo, while we worked with grace to work out camera angles that suit the movement. When working on the material, we worked out that for the fast section of my material, we wanted the camera to run round with/through us as it made the movement seem more disjointed and the camera became a fourth dancer.

Our next task was to think of costumes that would suit the material. We thought about something loose fitting, and our original idea was something like yellow trench coats, something that stood out. When we went into the costume cupboard there wasn’t any coats, and the one thing that stood out was two wedding dresses. We decided that as there was only two, we wanted a contrasting colour dress that stood out from the white. As we decided last week on outside locations, we chose a red dress to contrast with the white and the green of the grass. Once we put on the wedding dresses, the movement became very restrictive, however, the movement of the dresses looked really good on the camera and added more texture to the piece. We decided to continue with the dresses and keep rehearsing in them to become more familiar with the movement restrictions and the weight of the dress.

Our homework for this was to go round as a class and choice a location to film all of our material in our costumes.

Screen Dance Journal

Week 6: 9/11/17

In this weeks class we began by recapping the criteria for this unit. We wanted to make sure we know how we are being marked and what we have to do within this unit to get the marks we deserve. When we got up into the space to start dancing, the song Bullet Proof came up randomly on the playlist. We began to dance how we do in a club. From this we decided to do a basic walking sequence: forward, backwards, side, side. We could perform the walking movement how we wanted, galloping, turning, clapping and/or kicking. We then changed the direction of the walk and we could travel wherever we wanted to in the space. After doing this for a while, we got into small groups of twos and threes and created a dance around and with each other. I found this a really fun way of getting us warmed up, and walking through and seeing the space we dance in.

We then recapped all the material we have so far and created an order to show this material. Once we performed this piece, we got into a group discussion about how we could perform our material within the criteria as a live performance. However, I felt unsure about this idea as I wanted to go through the whole process of filming and editing our material as a class, and see what we could create. We decided to stick with a film and got into small groups and began to look for locations for our material. My material travels a lot, so I wanted quite a lot of space. I found an outside location that had a lot of depth to it. After showing my location, we discussed how we have the desire for me to use the whole depth of the space, and travel really far away from, and really close to the camera. We then filmed the other people in my groups and we helped them to decide on location and camera angle. During the group discussion, we wanted it to almost be CCTV type footage. So we tried to replicate this with getting high angles and pointed angles.