Evaluation

I had a lot of fun on this project, and I'm really happy with how the film turned out. Myself, Shahid and Tom were well organised and got our pre-production sorted very early on, which really made the rest of the production and post so much easier. Our shoot went very smoothly, and we were very lucky to have found the dancer we did as she was perfect for what we wanted. 

As a Director, I felt I engaged with the dancer quite well. I tried to experiment with her and we had a good relationship, I found it easy to explain concepts to her in a way she understood what I meant and my general communication around the group and between the dancers during the audition stage was good and I'm glad I could do that. If I could go back I felt I could have provided a bit more detail, and been a bit more behind the camera on the shoot. On the shoot I directed the dancer, and then proceeded to watch her, and most of the time I didn't look at the shot after. There were a couple of shots I should have done, because I feel that if we had re-shot them then they would have been better overall.

As a Producer, I felt I was well organised. I communicated well and I kept on top of things. I liased with the dancers efficiently and provided quick replies with detail. I felt I was positive throughout the whole process, even during problems and tried my best to make the pre-production as strong as possible to make the rest of the project run even more smoothly.

In post, I felt that we should have finalised the edit earlier than we did. I made the rough cut just to get us ahead, and we never really finalised it. I wasn't entirely happy with it as I knew from the footage we got and from a tutorial with Rosie that the film could be better. I went and re-cut it and a lot of work on VFX shots and sound was wasted as a result. However, we still got it done to a high standard and I don't regret the decision to re-cut the film as I felt it ended up being far stronger overall. 

I really enjoyed doing the sound design as I have previously mentioned, and I really liked seeing it all come together. I think I could have managed my time more effectively, but overall I am really happy with the way it turned out.

In fact, overall I am really happy with the result of the film. It's experimental and abstract, but I think all of us collectively pushed ourselves to create something we were all really happy with. I definitely wouldn't mind working with these guys again, because it was relaxed and fun throughout the whole process. Even when we were stressing about room changed and post-production.

Sound Design

My main role in post-production was to be sound design. I really wanted to do the sound for this project, and on the day I know I recorded some good sounds to use for the sound design and I was looking forward to creating it.

Firstly, my intention was to use the heartbeat recording we took from Amelia to create a beat to carry through the entire film. I wanted to set the pace of the film with it. So I played around with a few beats and I finally settled on one I liked:




Once I was happy with that, I needed to add breathing and movement noises and sync that with the rough cut we had. I wanted to make the noises sound as if they were really close so that they would be obvious and to give the impression of closeness to the dancer. I planned to add a reverb to this later as well to make it sound as if the space was very large. I created a separate track for each side of the 'mirror'. I then added breathing and movement noises to these:





I was really happy with how this turned out, I had to play around with levels, but overall I thought that combined with the beat it sounded pretty good. To add emphasis to the movement noises I added some wooshing sounds to some of quick head flicks and some added sounds to hand movements. 

At this point I added reverb before I went any further. I wanted to make it sound like it was in as big of a room as possible and so I chose to use a large church as a base and then played around with the levels until it was just right.

I then wanted to start creating more of a loose melody with the piece so I started trying to create a couple of tracks to go on top of the main beat to gradually add in and take away throughout. I then had to focus on other parts of the film, finalising an edit over the weekend so my friend Rory Wheble kindly created a few tracks for me to try and play around with:



He really helped me out with making sounds like this one, and they made a great addition to the soundtrack. After I had finished this I had to rearrange the sounds as we now had a final cut to sync them to, and I still had some sounds to fill in because I left the VFX shots blank as I wasn't sure how they were going to look. After this was done I exported it and Tom did a final mix of the sound, and then we exported it. I really enjoyed making this soundtrack even though it took a long time and was quite tiring:

Offline Editing

Over the easter I decided to do a rough cut of the film to get us ahead in our post-production once we came back as we had a quick turn around before our deadline and we also had other deadlines looming as well. 

Firstly I went through and renamed all the footage so that I could find my way easier and then quickly went through it to see what we had, I would loved to have sat there and watched it all but we shot 2 hours worth of footage on the shoot day. I tried to follow the storyboard as closely as I could at first because I wanted to have some sort of structure to start it. However I found that the film didn't really make sense when put in that order, and seeing as a lot of footage was improvised I found match framing it to be quite difficult in order to not disrupt the continuity.

Another thing I had to consider was the effects shots. As some of them would include multiple shots at once, I had to just roughly put them where they needed to go in order for Tom to know where I wanted them later on.

I also had to consider length. I didn't want it to be too long as I felt it wasn't necessary, however I also felt it couldn't just be a couple of minutes because the film is so abstract I wanted to give the audience some time to absorb the film.

Overall for a quick cut it was roughly how I wanted it to be, and I felt I gave it a good go at being thorough ready for our post-production stage.

Shooting Day

The day had finally arrived for our shoot and we were all very excited and ready to go. We got there at around 8 with a view of starting at 10.30. Tom had organised us a shoot order and I gave Amelia a call sheet for her own reference a couple of days before the shoot. Once the lights were all set up, we were ready to go and pretty much on schedule.

I had Kat take the timings whilst Shahid read the words out for our wide shots, which we decided to do first. The day ran very smoothly in general. We let Amelia choose her own music as we felt it would be easier for her to dance to something which she knows would feel right for the quality of movement we wanted. This meant that we were going to have to record sounds later on for the soundtrack. 

At a couple of points throughout the day we had to stand for a few minutes and figure out how the lighting was going to work as we wanted front mid shots and close-ups of the dancer, but we had to move the lights around to do it. This could have been better planned, but we sorted it out very quickly and we just switched some shots around on the shot list in order to make it work more efficiently for us. This was especially problematic for the intended VFX shot of Amelia going through the mirror as we had to keep reshooting it for continuity purposes, which we could have planned better. However we stayed on schedule all day and finished when we expected to. We all had a fun day, and Amelia told me that it was a really nice way of working for her.

Throughout the day we also had Laura, who did make-up for us and Kat and Lauren as our runners. It was much easier having them around and made things run very smoothly. We also had them recording the day with photos and videos as well for our own memories and to give to Amelia after the project was finished.

Rehearsals

On the day of our rehearsal with Amelia, I was really excited to meet her and to get working. I had such high hopes for this film and for her as a dancer and I really wanted it to work out well. I came with a general plan of what I was going to go through with her, such as setting her tasks and then seeing what we could generate with her. The day also offered us an opportunity to do some technical tests and decide on costume ahead of the actual day.

Once Amelia arrived we introduced ourselves and sat down with her to talk through the project and how the day was going to go. She showed us some of her costume ideas at this point and we decided that we would see how the clothes looked while she was moving and then decide based on that.

Firstly, based on the audition we did with Daisy, I gave her the task of trying to dance as if she was trapped in a box, and she really wanted to get out. The harder she pushed, the bigger the box got. I put on some music that I had found previously and we watched her do that. I was very pleased with her movements and knew from that moment that we had chosen the right person for us. She had a mixture of qualities of Joe and Sophie from the dance workshop with Rachel that we really liked. From there things really progressed, and Amelia gave us a lot of input which helped us structure how we thought our film was going to look, and we had a lot of fun in the process. In the end the task we found most successful was getting her to react to different body parts being shouted out. We shouted out random body parts and a verb to go with it e.g. spiky tailbone, and saw how she reacted. This then threw up the problem of how we were going to time it to make it match in the planned wide shots we had, and so we decided to shout out the same words running through it twice, timing when the words were said and then telling Amelia that she was either being oppressed or the oppressor. This gave us some really interesting, contrasting quality of movements without the continuity errors that would have not allowed it to work.

The last thing we did with the day was to shoot some technical tests and just generally shoot some footage of her for our own reference.

We also later on that night decided on costume for her to wear, we took some reference photos of what she was wearing for the rehearsals, but one was too floaty and one was too restrictive. 

We wanted to keep the costume simply, and we liked the bare legs and plain white shirt, so we wanted to keep that but we wanted something with a bit of movement.

Auditions

Our plans for the 4th and 6th of March didn't work out as no one could make it on that day, so we held our skype auditions first on the 12th and then held our other audition on the 13th. During the skype auditions we were speaking to two people, called Caldonia and Amelia. We interviewed Amelia first, and we really liked her attitude towards our project and she seemed to really understand what we wanted. After speaking with Caldonia, we also really liked her, she was nice and she understood what we required from the project as well. We also looked at their show reels and were very impressed with the quality of movement that both of them created.

The next day we then also audition Daisy Tait in person, I was looking forward to auditioning a dancer in person mainly because I had never done it before, and so it would give me the experience of auditioning someone from a medium I have not had much experience with. We liked Daisy and some of the material she gave us was really nice. We asked her if we could film her and gave her the footage afterwards.

In the end we decided to go for Amelia, as we really liked her quality of movement and the way she spoke about out project. We immediately clicked with her and felt that we could have a really good working relationship. At this point we had to change our shoot date to the 20th due to unforeseen circumstances, and this worked out better for her anyway. We arranged a rehearsal on the 16th to work out how we wanted to shoot the piece with her and to generate something really good with her. We agreed to pay her expenses and food etc.

Finding a Dancer

After our pre-production was mostly done and we had booked our shoot for the 25th March, all we needed to do now was to find a dancer. I offered to do this, and so I set about firstly by emailing Rachel asking for ideas of where the best place to post dancer ads would be since she would know far better than I would. She suggested places like Ideas Tap and Artshub, so I set about placing those ads, using our synopsis to give a good idea of what the film was about and our description of the dancer we wanted.

After getting a few replies, we decided to try and organise auditions for the 4th and 6th March. However some people couldn't make it so we decided to hold skype auditions on the 12th as well.

Final Ideas for our Dance Film/Pitch

After talking about our production design ideas, we agreed as a group that we wanted our film to reflect the lighting and minimalistic style of Pas de Deux, because we didn't want to reflect the message we were trying to portray literally. We also felt that the lighting style would contribute to the mood we wanted for our film as the film is all to do with hidden identity, or hidden parts of a personality.

Also, we also decided that our sound design should reflect the sound design in Rosas Danst Rosas, as we really liked that attitude, and as our film is intending to have very specific and deliberate movements, to be able to hear that in a minimalistic way and focus in on that will hopefully draw attention on the dancer themselves and the movements they create.

In preparation for our pitch, we aimed to have all of our production pack together in order to get it signed off quickly and allow us to start organising the shoot day as quickly as possible. Shahid and Tom had already decided that they respectively wanted to be the Cinematographer and Camera Operator, as well as handling the colour grading and the editing. I took on the role as the director, and co-producer with Tom. I also wanted to do the sound design for this project as I had quite a good idea in mind for it. 

So with that all sorted, I went about making a shot list based on my vision for the film, which Shahid then did a beautiful storyboard for. I also wrote the treatment for the film and synopsis, whilst Tom did the risk assessment and also set about creating a google doc with tabs that allowed us all to see our scheduling, contact details, budgeting etc.

The main thing about the structure of the film I would say I wanted to get across is the progression throughout the film from being controlled and restricted to being totally free. I want to try and work with the dancer that we get in order to get that message across. In my shot list I have told it in a very narrative based way, however due to the nature of the dance it's very possible it will end up as something completely away from that.

Our pitch went very well, and we got plenty of compliments on our organisation. I used some photographs to reference what the lighting was going to be like, and they seemed to be quite optimistic about the film in general.

Dance Film- Tutorial and Further Research

My group's initial idea is to create a film in which a dancer is following a set of repetitive movements, stuck in this monotone routine, and their reflection begins to attempt to break the real person free from this kind of oppression. The dance would evolve slowly until the dancers were in unison with each other, and the reflection has achieved its goal of getting the real person to break free from the norm and follow their personal rhythm.

On 8th Feb my group had our first tutorial with Rachel, and this is a summary of what was said:

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?

So there is alot to work on before our next tutorial. To begin with, I did some research into other dance videos that were similar to the idea we had to try and get some inspiration from them:

Pas De Deux- This film is very simple in its concept, but it's very effective. It is very much my feeling that if you are filming a dance, you need to do something interesting with the camera. These kinds of effects I think are something we could play with.

Lodela- Similarly to Pas De Deux, this also plays with the camera, but more with camera angles. Since we are mirroring it has made me think of a way in which we could mirror in more ways than vertically, and in what ways our dancers could interact. I also love the simplicity of the set in this. I think our film has to conform to something more along these lines.

Rosas Danst Rosas- This dance film has the kind of evolving repetitive sequence we are going for in our film, and the group love the sound design, which is more driven by the movements of the dancers than music. We have agreed that this is the kind of attitude we want our sound to have.

Weightless- This film cleverly plays with the angle, and the set design as the set has been flipped as well as the camera to give this really mysterious feel to the film. I also love the simplistic movements of the dancers which to me suggest a sense of childlike wonder.

The XX 'Islands'- This music video is interesting as it involved repetitive movements which evolve over time, but it a less progressive way. The same shot and movements of the dancers are repeated over and over whilst the band themselves have different reactions to the movement over time, this then appears to affect the movements of the dancers as well. I like this idea of a repeating shot.

These videos have given me a lot of visual stimulation, and will allow me to come up with some further ideas which will hopefully further the film conceptually into something simple, but effective.

Dance Three Day Workshop

After our briefing about making a dance film and shown some examples of films which experiment with the use of dance, we were organised to have a three day workshop with choreographer, Rachel Palmer. This is an overview of what we explored on those days.

Day 1- Rachel firstly went through the history of dance in film, covering the way dance in film has changed with new technologies and focusing on the modern uses of dance in front of the camera. We then began to explore the way in which bodies look on camera with different angles and concentrating on different body parts:

Day 2- We then started developing some initial ideas we could use as a starting point for our projects. We needed to come up with some actions and tasks that we could set the professional dancers we had coming in for the third day. I was working with Thomas, Shahid, and Joel. Thomas wanted to experiment with the ideas of starting from normal activities and having a dancer evolve into a full dance, like an infectious movement that spreads throughout the whole body. I wanted to experiment with mirroring and seeing whether you could get a dancer to interact through dance with a mirror image without touching the mirror. We merged these ideas together to create the idea of a dancer working with a mirror image in a mundane set of movements, when eventually the mirror diverts from this set of movements to provoke something more free flowing, and trying to grab the attention of the 'real-life' person. To experiment with this idea, we got a couple of class members to come up with a couple of repetitive movements and then having them run through this set of movements over and over, until we asked one of them to start slowly adding in attached movements but still staying in time with the original actions. The result was promising, and we were looking forward to asking the dancers to do this on the following day.

Day 3- As I said previously, myself and the group asked the dancers to design a set of repetitive movements, we put them into pairs and then observed their results. I was interested to see a lot of observable differences in the dancing styles and it meant we got a lot of varying results which we were perhaps not expecting. For example, we originally thought of having the dancers facing opposite each other and not touching, but we really liked how one pair crossed over each other in their actions and so it made us consider how we could try placing the mirror image in different places with respect to the 'real' person.

Later on in the day we also filmed two of the dancers together from a couple of different angles to give us some reference for later on. We really liked the dancing styles of Jo, a professional hip-hop dancer and Sophie, a professional contemporary dancer. They were so opposite each other in terms of dance styles that the way they interacted with each other really worked with our idea. I loved how Jo could use her hip-hop background to create the mundane, repetitive actions and I also loved how Sophie could do much more improvisation and really thought outside the box to break away from those actions. It created an interesting dynamic and gave us a lot to think about for the development of this idea.