Dance - Evaluation

Working with Tom and Lucy on this project, I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed myself and am extremely happy with how the film turned out turning out better than we had expected. A major factor that really helped is the fact myself, Tom and Lucy we were all very organised and had sorted our pre- production early on, thus making the whole production and post production process and in all the whole dance project easier. Only having one day to shoot, it went extremely well, and were lucky to have found dancer Amelia for this project as she was ideal for what we wanted and treated the project like her own we as a group had instantly made a working relationship with Amelia making the process a whole lot easier as well.

 

As a DOP - director of photography, being in charge of lighting, and assisting with camera , I felt I had done a good job in maintaining the lights in keeping them consistent to avoid continuity. Communication between myself and the camera operator Tom I found it really easy to liaise with him and in capturing the shots that I had created with help from Lucy. With lightning being a skill apart of the DOP I felt that the lighting, I was happy with the look of the film and felt that I had achieved the classical Caravaggio look gaining the skills from the photography unit I had undertaken. Creating unexpected lights in some of the shots which by accident really added to the piece, because in some of the footages we had shot the close ups of the Amelia's face for instance you could see green light, that looked like a green lens flare being unexpected but really made the piece unique. However I should have probably had taken more consideration into the lights as in some of the footages the dancers face were almost unrecognisable and meant that in post I had to lighten the dancers face by using an effect called animat which took ages to do to light her face up. However you learn from your mistakes and has taught me not to make this mistake again and not to rely everything in post.
 

As a Storyboard artist, Not being big headed or anything I think I produced an extremely detailed and professional storyboard. Portraying exactly what we as a group had envisioned. I will probably challenge myself next year no matter what film or style or genre it is storyboarding for other groups as well as for other courses. To further my skills in Storyboarding.  
        

 In post, colour grading and being an online editor, I felt I had delivered to my expectations and am happy of the final film. Although Lucy had done a re-cut of the first rough cut at the last minute which meant I had to with Tom's help completely re-cut the film in avid which meant that some of the effects shots that Tom had given me which I had put in had be scrapped but nonetheless the re-cut is far better than the first. I am extremely happy that we as group have made a high standard professional film which I am really happy with.

In all, I am happy with the final dance video the style, look, colour the story behind it.

I am really pleased with it and am excited to enter the film into festivals. I have really enjoyed working Tom and Lucy and would want to work with them again for future works. Being in a group with talented and hard working individuals it has made me push myself and I have defiantly leant a thing or two from both Tom and Lucy. 

And am happy to present our experimental and abtsract film.

Post Production Edit - Online Editor

After grading the films was done, with tom working on the effects shots Tom would pass me the effects shot and I would then add them into the cut. To make the effects shots work as well as giving me the VFX shot I also asked Tom to produce a matte of the effects shot as well.

This being the matte template above and VFX below.

When splicing the effect shot into the timeline I would layer the matte and VFX shot together applying a matte key on the matte shot to blend the together.

Layering the shots together from the timeline. With green screen shot first once ive been given the effect shot I would layer them on top of each other. So I would place the effect on a new video layer above the green screen clip, then I duplicated the effects shot and then put the matte template on top over the duplicated shot applying a matte key effect on this. The colour I produced I saved them as colour templates I simply applied the two different colours on to the two effects shots to get the split screen as you can see. if your reading this it sounds hard and difficult but its really rather simple . :)

Applying this same process on to the other green screen footages.

We had the avid edit suite booked and it was the same repeated process Tom would be doing the effects, Lucy would be in another room working on the sound and I would be in the same room as Tom doing the online edit. Tom would pass me the effects shot and I would put it together and splice it in to the video and at some points Lucy would come in and check on us It felt like working in a professional environment and felt like I was working within the actual Industry.      



Post Producton Edit - Colourist

Once everything had been transcoded and imported into avid I started the online edit and Colouring.

With Tom starting on the effects shots I started on the colour grading of the film. Speaking to Lucy the director on what colour she wanted the film. As Lucy wanted two different colours one warm and the other cold the warm colour being the reflection and the cold being real life. Lucy then started on the sound and left me to work on the colour.  

Setting the mode to colour correction mode , started to experiment and grade the film.  This was a fun process for me as it's an area I find really interesting and how colour can add to a film. using the colour wheel and curves to get the two different colours for the manipulator and the manipulated. trying to balance out the colours making sure the colours used weren't illegal. whilst grading the film there's different waveforms such as an vector scope etc displayed on the monitor.

On the different waveforms there's negative on the bottom and positive on the top and the colour has to remain balanced in between this, anything above or below the negative and positive lines the colour is illegal therefore not a broadcasting colour. However there were in a few shots where the colour was illegal so I applied an effect called safe colour limiter what this does is it compress the colour and keeps everything within the boundary so any colour that is off this effect keeps it legal.

The symbol above being the colour safe limiter which helps to keep the colour legal. Using this because when skimming through the clips it was to hard to find where the colour was being off so I applied colour limiter above the whole timeline to make sure the colour was safe.

This is the final grade of the film the top the warm colour being the reflection, the bottom the the cold blue being the real life. It took a while to produce these colours. Im pleased with the colour I have produced So was Lucy and Tom which we think best represent the different sides.

Final colour comparison below 

Post Production

Before we broke up for Easter we had booked out the avid editing suite so when we came back we could start ASAP however there was a mix up with the booking and Simon Allmark had booked the suite from 13th- 28th March instead of 13th-28th April so we just rebooked with Simon all was sorted. Lucy had done a rough cut of the dance video  over Easter.

Rough Cut below:

The rough cut being  made on premiere pro we had to transcode the video so that it would be editable in avid. So we exported the rough cut into different formats theses formats being EDL, AAF etc. So we could open these formats into avid. However these formats didn't work. Tom on his Mac took the rough cut into software called Da Vinci resolve and transcoded the rough cut, transcoding the video through Da Vinci resolve worked. We were able to open the rough cut in avid however we had to relink all the footages Lucy had in the rough cut which took a whole morning relinking and importing the footages into avid

Elysian Shoot (Runner)

25th March 2015


Helping out on the set of the elysian dance shoot being a runner on set.

 

Helping out on this set has been fun and enjoyable. Wanted to post this as helping out I may of have just been a runner also ( assisting Tom on camera )but would like to think that my helping had benefitted them greatly.

Dance Video: The Shoot

20th March 2015

Shooting Day has arrived feeling exited. :)

Getting Starting / Set Up

We had picked up the equipment the day before so that we could get the Camera and Samurai blade ready and have the blade card formatted ready for shoot. We started by getting the equipment into the studio then started to set up the space. Myself and Tom were getting the camera, blade and glidecam ready. Lucy greeted Amelia at the reception to bring her in to the studio. We had extra support from the Elysian group with Laura, Lauren and Katherine helping out and being runners helping with make-up, timing and lightning.

Setting up the camera was straightforward since it was all ready and prepared from the previous day, the tricky bit was balancing the glidecam, getting the camera balanced on the glidecam took longer then we thought. So we decided to solve the glidecam balancing after lunch as the glidecam shots were after we had lunch.



The lightning was fairly easy to set up, however we had to be careful in that we made sure we filmed every light change, to avoid continuity.

 

Setup done shoots starts:

Everything was set-up, Tom being Camera operator we spoke as a group and decided to film all the master shots and mid shots of the entire dance, filming from both the manipulator's and the manipulated's performance. These being the split screens shots so the camera was locked off.

To keep the fluidity of improvisation Amelia our dancer would play her own songs, that would help her along with being given keywords for example body parts such as, bones/collarbone/ back/.    Improvising off these combined words to form a an improvised dance piece. With Tom handling the camera, with Lucy giving directions whilst myself saying these words to Amelia timing the words to maintain the an synchronized dance piece being easier for the next take as they were repeated in the same order.

 

 

 

After these master and mid shots, we filmed the close-ups and frontal shots these a being combination of handheld shots.

 

Our theory was that the dancer was confined to the frame, therefore the camera would not move and trap their performance. Thus when the dancer becomes fluid/loose she breaks out of the restrictions of the frame, then the camera would now follow the movements.

 

To help the dancer in knowing where the frame was we put an extra monitor pointed at Amelia, using the extra monitor as reference giving Amelia chances to experiment a lot more.

 

 

 

 For the technical and complicated shots we used green screen, adding markers on to the screen for easier tracking when in post.

Using a tape putting a line down on the floor using this line as mirror reference. We had shot all the shots from our shot list. So we then for extra material decided to  experiment with different lenses, camera angles and slow motion, filming about two hours worth of footage having a lot of material for us to work from.

End of the Day

Overall I was really happy with our shoot, and although we could have done with an extra shoot day, I believe that we can work with everything that we've got. It helped that we got extra help as we would have found it difficult and a bit tricky being a group of three however I am happy and confident that we have pulled it and that the extra help benefitted us. Lucy smashed it with finding Amelia, to work with a talented and collaborative dancer, who thought of this piece as her own and not as a job. This being my first dance video I would defiantly shoot this again. 

Auditons & Rehearsals before the Shoot

Thursday 12th March 2015 -

Casting and Auditions -

After receiving replies for our film we did two Skype auditions one with Amelia below and one with Caldonia below. We did one physical audition and during the audition we asked the dancer what they would like to add in terms of there of their own ideas and influence to the project, and also asked some practical things such as availability.

Amelia 

Caldonia



This is footage from the physical audition we done. ( Daisy Tait)

Daisy Tait was good, but we felt as a group that she seem passionate enough and didn't have enough enthusiasm for the project, same with Caldonia and that Daisy and Caldonia if we have of chosen either of them two they would have needed direction and their hand holded which we didn't have time for as we only have one day to shoot. Due to some complications in room booking and scheduling due to an anonymous individual.

We decided to cast Amelia Forrest as from her Skype interview she seemed really passionate and enthusiastic about our project and had a lot of her own input, which we as a group seemed really about to take on board and how she's part of an professional dance company.

During our Skype conversation with Amelia we  talked alot about collaboration, and how different art form could feed in to each other.

We also went through different film ideas and how to approach the idea, and how we'd like to structure it.

Overall, as a group we are extremely happy with Amelia, and believe she is a strong motivated, passionate and enthusiastic individual and fits for the part. I think Lucy smashed it in finding Amelia Lucy outdone herself in my opinion.


Monday 16th Rehearsals

On Monday we booked out JLO8 for our rehearsals where we met Amelia for the first time, and had a quick brief and greet of our new dancer. We as a group with Amelia had a discussion about trying out a few things i.e. movement, visual effects and costume. Footage from the rehearsals.



A quick VFX experiment which Tom had done on the day, to see weather the idea would work. in my opinion it looks good and am looking forward to shooting the film.

Dance Presentation- Project Proposal

Project Proposal

Dance Video sign off.
Thursday 5th March 2015 - Room R19
Rosie Gunn & Rachel Palmer

Production Pack

 compiled by Tom with help from myself and Lucy

Final - Storyboard

As the rough storyboard concept was just a draft to show how our dance video will look like roughly, Lucy then came up with a shot list from inputs I had roughly run past her for me to draw to up final storyboard.



Here is the final storyboard devised from the shots created by Lucy and partial inputs from myself.
taking references from the films that we had watched from our dance workshops and workshops from Field and Frames :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bXWWz5Tv_I
http://youtu.be/oQCTbCcSxis
http://youtu.be/gvyU9ZchEXE
http://youtu.be/yfJEVAVR6o8

Dance Video - Learning agreement form

From doing three previous agreement forms for my last project Maps & Journeys, it has helped me to write up a detailed and descriptive agreement form stating what I what I want gain and achieve from this dance project.

Dance Video - StoryBoarding Rough Concepts

when Tom, Lucy and myself got together to discuss the individual roles we were assigning each other. I of course because I love to draw am a more creative person I volunteered and was assigned by Tom and Lucy to draw up a rough storyboard, so as we as a group had rough idea about how the film may look.

A rough sketch -

 



when presenting this to Rachel at our second tutorial, she really liked the storyboard and the wide establishing shot but also said we needed to consider the space and objects within the space and weather these things will impact our film.

 

notes taken from the second tutorial we needed to consider -

 

-Try braking everything down to scenes and tasks

 

-ask that the dancer is confident with improvisation and ready to develop dances with us
IMPORTANT

-Think through the type of dance, and break down each individual bit of the synopsis line by line
explain that the reflection is a metaphor for the true self.

Synopsis we needed to break down line by line -

In a dark minimalistic room we see a person dancing using repetitive, monotone in nature and constrained movements, as if stuck in his daily routine without any hope. However his mirror reflection tries to convince him to break out of his routine, at first with no result as the person tries to ignore his reflection. However as the film progresses the person will slowly “break free” from his former self, starting to incorporate fluid movements in to his monotone routine, eventually ending up fully on dancing and leaving his past self behind. At the end of the film, both person and reflection become actual mirror images, as if the person has finally found his true self.

 

Dance Video - Tutorial

We had a tutorial with Racheal Palmer about our dance idea in which myself, Lucy, Tom and Joel came up with the idea of a person breaking out of his mundane boring life and how this is interpreted through dance.

the notes taken on the day by Racheal and aspects we needed to consider and think about:


Mirror Idea - this is coming along - Great idea

Glad that we are moving away from the idea of literal - office space,
although this was a good starting point.
I want you to think about that this video represents, what it is
saying -
We talked about:
Trying to escape from the constraints of daily life, particularly:
Facing what represses us
We get taught, told what we should do - the 'right' thing, the 'safe'
thing
As a person as an individual you want to do so many things, but
responsibility sometimes constrains us
Also a lack of motivation, self belief, the pressure of social
acceptability
constrains us.
You liked the idea of two different movement styles to represent the
opposing sides - you'll need to find a dancer who can do both styles
that
you are after.
I wonder if it may be about constrained v's free movement, how do you
constrain the body?  What texture is in the body when it is
constrained, v's
when it is free?
Think about oppositions to represent free v's repressed:
In water / out of water
In the air / on the floor
Slow motion / Real Time
Close up / V's Wide Angles
Tension / Relaxed
contained in something / in a large open space
How does a viewer experience watching the expressed self v's the
repressed
self?

In terms of set:
Minimalist:  black back drop, minimal objects? Mirrors and Cameras
Questions:  pick your objects carefully, what do they represent?
In terms of your two sides of the character: repressed self v's free
self,
think about:
What does the person want to see in their reflection?

Things to work on for next tutorial:
Storyboard: How is the dance going to translate the concept?
synopsis
technical tests
description of dancers
learning agreements – who’s doing what
time tabling
test shots
  

 

Dance: Choreography Workshop

Rachel Palmer started off our dance class with a few videos, so we could better understand dance, music and film videos.

These were the videos we were shown:


"Dance Serpentine" by lumiere brothers 

 "Pas De deux" 1902 

"The magic lantern" by George melies 1903

"Alice in wonderland" 1903

having looked at these videos the older dance videos had alot of stage feel to them, most of the videos being filmed like they are on stage.

A lot of the new dance videos/ films it is all about camera movements and how they follow the dance.

We had discussed the entertainment and conceptual sides of dance having looked at the following videos:

Busby Berkeley 1930Aesthetically pleasing patterns with a big number of dancersFocused on entertainment

Mary wigman 1929 Conceptual, self indulgent.

We then watchhed more videos, a variety of music videos and dance videos and had to write notes, on the aspects we liked about each videos.


"Mached" by lxd I like the fact that they are using objects Emotions

"1234" by Feist Looks cool, reminds me of Berkeley, dance feels a bit out of place though

"Sunrise" by Yeasayer Good use of camera movements, has a nice concept Cuts follow the dance

"Choreography Reel" by Tamara Levinson Quite bold movements, visually interesting Black BG doesn't distract from the dance

"Rosas danst rosas"  by rosas
 Very precise Movements

"Ghostcatching" by Bill T Jones, Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar Visually very stunning Good idea to visually race the movement Cutting edge technology for the time

"Guns and horses" by Ellie Golding Too many separate things merged together superficially Dancers and singer a bit out of place


After that we jumped in to some basic movement workshops ourselves, in groups, to better understand how dance may be manifested. We were assigned in rough groups, however myself, Lucy, Joel and Tom combined and formed an idea that we are thinking of using for our final piece.

Our idea we came up with is about a person who is living a mundane life, and is in a room or an office, moving in a repetitive and boring fashion. Suddenly his reflection in the mirror tries to disrupt this repetitive pattern and convince the real person to "live life" and break free from this repetitive

movement.

We then filmed professional dancer's trying out our idea which Tom and Lucy have filmed. Trying out our idea with the professional dancers was extremely useful, and may even be a

starting point for our final piece.