I have been working with Emily on choreography for my film. I have music now -commissioned from Finn Anderson. I let Emily listen to this as we were warming up and went through the ideas again with her. This is the third time we have met up in preparation. The first to go through the images and ideas and give her as much information about my project as needed so that she understands where we are heading. The second meeting to go through the script and decide how we will go about it. We decide to go into the studio with the music. So this week that is what we did. I filmed the process looking at four slightly different approaches. I tried to get in floorwork as well as travel never losing sight of the 'line' I feel will take us through the film. Re visiting McLaren's own work, particularily his drawings, has also proveded some new ideas.This drawing..a letter to a friend...discovered when I was on placement at The archive in Stirling.. shows, I feel, that McLaren really understood dance. Emily and I discussed this drawing at length and tried to recapture the exact moment in real time. We decided it was perhaps not completely possible but we actually worked on it in the studio among other things.
The drawing on this letter is really in full flow in movement terms...in lability in Laban terms..i.e. off balance..Emily and I discovered it would not actually be possible to recover from this position!! But the drawing inspired me and has provided great material for choreography. Based on the work with Emily we found this similar position..
I have taken the film of the work with Emily and made drawings from it..trying to use McLaren's loopy style, so suggestive of movement so that in the film I might move from the original drawing to my animated drawing..effectively animating McLaren's letter to Hermes. In a sense I feel here that I am taking on the roles of director, animator, camera and producer all at the same time and I have learned from the sessions with Peter Richardson that some of these would be best delegated. However at this stage I also feel , like McLaren did, that if you have a clear idea of how you want your film to look it is useful to keep a tight rein on it.It is also good not to have the creative flow interupted. I also know that at some point I will need a team.
It is great that Emily really likes Finn's music and it seems to dictate to her the loops and twirls that I am searching for.
I captured a few more stills from the choreographic session which I like.
This really confirms for me that this is the style I want to use in my film. I had originally wanted to move from live action to animation as i have always sought to explore the links between my art and McLaren's but I wonder now whether I will be able to do this by this process...choreographing and then drawing...I am really on such a learning curve..but I am happy that my drawing is developing alongside everything else. In this drawing I overlaid two moments from Emily's dance and like the feel of that.
I feel the style really does convey a moment in a movement sequence. I am also reminded of Erica Russell's work. I have now looked at quite a few of her films..Feet of Song is still my favourite.But I do not want to use this style...and feel I could achieve what I am looking for with this loopy style of McLaren's.
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