This post is dedicated to my final film project for my MA at LABAN. I presented the five minutes film on Friday 6 December 2013 together with a short presentation of how I made the piece. The film is the culmination of a 10 week module called Dance and the Moving Image which I began in September 2013. The ethos of the module was: Everything is cinema; everything is choreography; everything in cinema is choreography! The name of the film is 'In becoming' and it is based on my experience of being pregnant. Read my previous post about the starting point for my film here. The choreography of ‘In becoming’ took on a more indirect appearance than I expected. My film became an investigation in how movement can be expressed in the interplay between camera, filmmaker and the editing process. The dance materialises when clips entwine and changes of colours or movement come together. For me, the dance in my film is the duet between the poetics of the filming process and the ambivalence of my pregnant body. Watch film here: Excerpt from essay Below you will find an excerpt from the accompanying essay I wrote for the piece. I have chosen a section that focusses on the obstructions I set for myself when I made the film. The 'obstructions' I refer to are a set of parameters that were there to help me eliminate ways of filming and editing the piece. Parameters The obstructions I made up were based on the idea that the film itself was to become a grotesque body: ambivalent, open and subject to change, a thing ‘in becoming’. I wanted this to come across primarily in the formal approach to filming rather than in the content. The tasks/restrictions were intended both to restrict and to release the ways that I would shot footage and the ways that I would edit it. The parameters I set for myself when shooting footage were the following: · Min 4 min of shooting something with camera fixed on one detail/object (constant change, incomplete and restricted viewing) · Max 3 min of shooting something that has a beginning–middle-end (life and death) My experience from the filming tasks Tom (my tutor) had given us, was that what felt like a long take where the camera was kept still was often a shorter clip than I expected. I would come away with shots that lasted 30-40 seconds. I therefore chose as one obstruction to do takes of minimum four minutes where the fixed camera focussed on one detail and movement only happened spontaneously within the frame. This obstruction derived from the part about the grotesque body that emphasises incompleteness and constant change. On the other hand I was interested in footage that showed something complete (an action from start to finish), so that I, in the editing process, could break it up and manipulate it in to being incomplete. In order for this to work for a short film it had to be a narrative/action that was fast. Three minutes seemed like an appropriate length. My association with the grotesque body in this case was the cycle of ‘birth’ and ‘death’ or beginning and end. With these parameters I set myself practical tasks for carrying out how to film, without imposing content on what to film. This still provided scope for spontaneity and intuition. I filmed on my iPad and a pocket digital camera, a Canon IXUS 110 IS, which meant I could work quite discreetly and film in reasonable quality without drawing too much attention to myself. It was important that the action in the shot was as un-staged as possible. For my cuts and sutures I chose different obstructions. The parameter I set myself for editing were the following: · Footage was not allowed to be shown as far its ‘natural’ (obvious) end (incomplete) · Clips were to alternate between fast and slow moving images + short and long takes (change and ambivalence) · Endings of a clip were the beginning of a new clip (cycle of death and life) From the footage I had shot in its entirety I was not allowed to show a clip in its full length. To give the audience a sense of ambivalence and change I wanted the rhythm of the cuts to be constantly changing between fast/slow images and short/long takes. Beginnings and endings of clips should weave in and out of each other and always be open to change. Acknowledging that my intention was to make the final piece a reflection of the process itself, it seems misguided or beside the point to ask myself whether the film was ‘successful’. The point, instead, was exactly that I did not anticipate or plan the outcome and therefore the film is a testament to what was happening in my life at this time. If I had to remake the film, circumstances would mean it would have a completely different outcome.
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Here you will find posts about subjects I find interesting and that all relate to my disciplines in dance, yoga and coaching: Dance research Improvisation Yoga Feminism Life Coaching Aerial Dance Creativity Philosophy Film Discipline Performance I am very happy to hear your feedback, so please comment below. Happy reading! Archives
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