Wednesday 30 November 2011

choreography

Have been working on choreography based on the theme of skating. It has helped to also visualise this feeling in another form..i.e. drawing..and to talk to people about skating and what it makes them think of or feel. Working with that sense I have experimented myself with some moves...trying to internalise what that feeling is about...to retain the memory of that movement in order to translate it to a dancer. It has been quite a journey. Having a film script worked out has also helped...something to show the dancer as well as talking about my ideas. Sharing my collected images has also somehow helped to tranlate my feelings to the dancer. I have never worked on one plane in my art...always wanted to draw from other disciplines in my pursuit of visualisation. I have so many photos too which I use as a satrting point .Having music commissioned is great.
The process for that also needed the images (and script of course). The dancer really responded well to the music....actually everyone I have played the track to has said it really captures my images (or imagined ideas?)well.

 with the dancer I worked on two distict sequences. One for floor..with the transition from drawn image to live action in mind....and the other across the floor...with skating in mind..and perhaps the transition to swan..as mentioned before.

The camera was hand held..and although we thought at first this would make the edit quite difficult...it has given some quite interesting effects. Someone also said it had a kind if old fashioed feel to it....mmmm

I certainly aim to re take the footage...and to do it again with lighting from the side. The technical crew were not available for this take...but I want to see how that will work out.

having Emily dressed in black but with arms showing gave us a good idea of how white...costume maybe....looks and highlighted the effect we worked on afterwards.

When we take it again I will try less white on the legs...and would like to try in the SDT dance studio which is mostly light...with darker costume.


The lines on the floor also threatened to present a problem..but like the hand held camera they also provided interesting opportunities ...

All in all I am happy with the choreography and have a lot of materrial to work on before I next see the dancer.

more light and water

I am now really getting into landscape photography. What relevance I hear you ask?? As Calum Colvin said....'A study of light and form'...and I feel it is entirely relevant when I will certainly be dealing with water in my film..even if it is frozen...and I will also have to work with light!

And water and light are emotive...everyone responds to the sunset and sunrise...the coming and going of the light...it is human nature to follow the light....although those of us living in the depths of the city (and the college!)do not really mind if it is light or not....others among us find rural life tricky when it is dark...we pay heed to the light...we notice when our veg patch stops growing because of the lack of light.And there is also the old Celtic myth about the worlds end (Finisterre) being where the sun sets in the West......I notice the light every day...and especially on my journey to Dundee!!!..............................................................



Humans react to light...we are meant to.....we are designed to wake at dawn and sleep in the dark....!!!
Tho few of us really pay heed to that instinct....



The Tay bridge really sits very nicely on a horizon at dusk!!! This kind of sight always makes me stop to look


Then there are days that end like this.....not too many of these...and you really have to stop...and go to the water's edge to take it all in..all this pink......surreal........is it the end? or another beginning?



So still...so dramatic it looks like the moon...if it had water that is.......and from all this....close up the water is amazing...maybe I could use THIS in my film????

water or ice?

On a recent visit to Dunkeld...one of my favourite places...My son took this photo, looking into a pool of water. When I saw it after it struck me that it looked almost as if the water was about to freeze. I have collected many images now of water,,flowing, still, frozen..in a quest to find the perfect setting for my film.





I probably have more than enough material for more than one film!!

skating visualised

Talking to people about skating has been fascinating.Even for those who would never be able to experience that gliding, effortless motion of a perfect skate on ice, the feeling they have is strong. Skating evokes a feeling...an E Motion....almost like it suggests you can fly. I need to capture this in some way. I have tried drawing people skating but this does not get across the sensation. It is definitely more to do woth visualisation and less to do with reality.I close my eyes and imagine I am able to do anything I like across the ice...How does this look in my mind?

And this is what I have come up with......in fact it is a still from an animation of my visualisation of skating.
I recently talked witha a dance group about this concept and a few of the group immediately began to trace a very similar pattern in space. What is it about ice skating that does spark this reaction?

becoming a swan!

Have been looking at how to make this tranformation in my film...to a swan. Like the metaphor of hard work to produce a beautiful result..it is a challenge! I have tried out a number of possibilities. I took a still from the short film test and felt this image is already half way to becoming a bird! I will work on this again, redoing the film footage and the after effects to see if I can tighten up the transition possibilities.