link to power point for tomorrow
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ueCezEhbFUSJX6s6KjvsTW4gtAcKF2WNKwCM0VvDFao/edit#slide=id.g9b9944fce_0_0
Showing posts with label Dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dance. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 April 2015
Tuesday, 28 April 2015
Dance - Final outcome + evaluation
Due to my rubbish internet i cant post the finished video online at this moment, but will look to upload it in the next few days.
Video evaluation
Over all i am happy with the finished video, i still feel like it has a little bit more work that could be done however it isnt that bad. It would have been nice if the beginning bit was a little bit longer as i feel it would make more of an impact that way, but i feel that its different and interesting to watch. I also feel like we should have had some ambient underwater sound that ran all the way under the film just to give it another layer. I feel there are some really interesting shots like the 360 ones or from above angles how ever there are some weaker ones that i wish i had framed a little better. There are a couple of continuity errors where we changed shot size and they moved position which we couldn't hide because we didn't get enough verity of that section of dance or if we did it didnt look as good. I feel the dance dosent tell the story as well as i imagined as it saw it as quite floaty and as a waltz but the director saw it alot on the floor, how ever i did my best to still capture the emotions we wanted despite this. I also think some of the cuts are quite jumpy as we made the the dance in 4 phrases but then when we put them together the didn't quite match up. I feel when we go back and add bubbles and lighting / lenses flares it will look a lot more finished. But over all, it isnt that bad.
Group evaluation
I feel for the most part we all worked well as a group, it was nice to work with a group all tried to do the project the best we could and didnt need telling what to do 100% of the time. I feel at points some of us had to take on a bit more work then we should have as others were struggling but it was not as bad as the other projects i have been in. I think having a strong and determined group is one of the main things that pushed this project, as we had a lot of complications but for the most part we had a we can do this dont stop attitude which meant in the times we wanted to give up or thought it was never going to happen but as we were all putting so much effort in we didnt want to let each other down. I think it was helpful that for the most part everyone stuck to there own job rolls and didnt try and interrupt or overstep people so it made it very easy to just focus and get things done, esspecially for me as i have never done this roll before so i could spend time reaserching it rather than worry about risk assments or something stupid.
My roll evaluation
This is the first time i have go to do something more creative in a project as i normally end up having to produce things as i get stuff done. All though im not that technical i feel i was the best suited to this role out of our group. I tried my best all though at some point i was like what am i ment to do but thats nothing that a google search couldn't solve. I think i did the role the best i could even though the lighting didnt turn out the way i planned and we couldn't get a slow enough camera to make the slow motion look what i wanted i think alot of the shots turned out ok. I preferred organising and planning how the camera and lighting was going to look rather than having to be on camera as im not that good at it. Having a cameraman as well also alowed me more time to think and get things together as i wasn't having to do like 500 jobs at once. All though i enjoyed doing something different for a change i think im just going to go back to producing as i find it alot easier, more stressful and boring but i think its what im best suited too. I feel the shot list could he been more organised which was mostly my fault how ever we didn't get to see the dance until the day before we were filming which made it alot harder to try and work out what we wanted to see and what part of the dance needed what shot, how ever as i had a clear vision of what it was going to look like i feel the group trusted me that it was going to be ok.
Over all evaluation
I feel we tried to take on something ambitious and despite the finished video looking a little different to how we pictured at the start we learnt a lot for all of the research we had to do. After all "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." James Cameron. I feel we all pushed myself to make this the best i could as alot of the work i have made so far hasnt been as good as i would have like and i felt like i wasnt achieving things to a good enough standard making me doubt myself, how ever fighting for this project to work despite all of its problems gave me alot more confidence. I feel the bad continuity at times allowed me and Lauren to make harsh decisions as what to keep and get rid, which thought us that all though things might not be how we like i dosent make it bad. I feel the decision to take the time to focus on the edit / dissertation proposal and come back to the effects when we have more time was a good one as i didnt want any of us taking out too much work and it becoming stressful like it did in other projects. Over all i think i learnt a lot from this project and from the whole year despite how stressful and upsetting it has been at times, i have mainly learnt how to work better with people by being more confident in myself or decisions i make. I think the work i am making is slowly becoming better and more to a standard i like and hopefully with a great team next year we will make something really good.
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." Robert Hughes
( i have a lot of tacky quotes like this as i was sending them to people to keep them motivated ahaha)
Video evaluation
Over all i am happy with the finished video, i still feel like it has a little bit more work that could be done however it isnt that bad. It would have been nice if the beginning bit was a little bit longer as i feel it would make more of an impact that way, but i feel that its different and interesting to watch. I also feel like we should have had some ambient underwater sound that ran all the way under the film just to give it another layer. I feel there are some really interesting shots like the 360 ones or from above angles how ever there are some weaker ones that i wish i had framed a little better. There are a couple of continuity errors where we changed shot size and they moved position which we couldn't hide because we didn't get enough verity of that section of dance or if we did it didnt look as good. I feel the dance dosent tell the story as well as i imagined as it saw it as quite floaty and as a waltz but the director saw it alot on the floor, how ever i did my best to still capture the emotions we wanted despite this. I also think some of the cuts are quite jumpy as we made the the dance in 4 phrases but then when we put them together the didn't quite match up. I feel when we go back and add bubbles and lighting / lenses flares it will look a lot more finished. But over all, it isnt that bad.
Group evaluation
I feel for the most part we all worked well as a group, it was nice to work with a group all tried to do the project the best we could and didnt need telling what to do 100% of the time. I feel at points some of us had to take on a bit more work then we should have as others were struggling but it was not as bad as the other projects i have been in. I think having a strong and determined group is one of the main things that pushed this project, as we had a lot of complications but for the most part we had a we can do this dont stop attitude which meant in the times we wanted to give up or thought it was never going to happen but as we were all putting so much effort in we didnt want to let each other down. I think it was helpful that for the most part everyone stuck to there own job rolls and didnt try and interrupt or overstep people so it made it very easy to just focus and get things done, esspecially for me as i have never done this roll before so i could spend time reaserching it rather than worry about risk assments or something stupid.
an actual picture of our group during this project
My roll evaluation
This is the first time i have go to do something more creative in a project as i normally end up having to produce things as i get stuff done. All though im not that technical i feel i was the best suited to this role out of our group. I tried my best all though at some point i was like what am i ment to do but thats nothing that a google search couldn't solve. I think i did the role the best i could even though the lighting didnt turn out the way i planned and we couldn't get a slow enough camera to make the slow motion look what i wanted i think alot of the shots turned out ok. I preferred organising and planning how the camera and lighting was going to look rather than having to be on camera as im not that good at it. Having a cameraman as well also alowed me more time to think and get things together as i wasn't having to do like 500 jobs at once. All though i enjoyed doing something different for a change i think im just going to go back to producing as i find it alot easier, more stressful and boring but i think its what im best suited too. I feel the shot list could he been more organised which was mostly my fault how ever we didn't get to see the dance until the day before we were filming which made it alot harder to try and work out what we wanted to see and what part of the dance needed what shot, how ever as i had a clear vision of what it was going to look like i feel the group trusted me that it was going to be ok.
Over all evaluation
I feel we tried to take on something ambitious and despite the finished video looking a little different to how we pictured at the start we learnt a lot for all of the research we had to do. After all "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." James Cameron. I feel we all pushed myself to make this the best i could as alot of the work i have made so far hasnt been as good as i would have like and i felt like i wasnt achieving things to a good enough standard making me doubt myself, how ever fighting for this project to work despite all of its problems gave me alot more confidence. I feel the bad continuity at times allowed me and Lauren to make harsh decisions as what to keep and get rid, which thought us that all though things might not be how we like i dosent make it bad. I feel the decision to take the time to focus on the edit / dissertation proposal and come back to the effects when we have more time was a good one as i didnt want any of us taking out too much work and it becoming stressful like it did in other projects. Over all i think i learnt a lot from this project and from the whole year despite how stressful and upsetting it has been at times, i have mainly learnt how to work better with people by being more confident in myself or decisions i make. I think the work i am making is slowly becoming better and more to a standard i like and hopefully with a great team next year we will make something really good.
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." Robert Hughes
( i have a lot of tacky quotes like this as i was sending them to people to keep them motivated ahaha)
Dance - How fields of frames inspired the shoot
As well as photography, fields and frames inspired me a lot for this film. In one of the lessons vicky was talking about how the length of a shot or the reflexivity of the camera can change the way a film is made.
The duration of our film was influenced by what the dance was ment to represent so in phase 1 it was about the crashing into the water, so these shots became rapid and interchanged.
The reflexivity of where the camera was allowed us to created interesting shot from above angles or spinning round in different directions i felt like this would give the dance another dimension making it more of a dance film than just us filming a dance.
The music video for pulps do you remember the first time is a good example of how these techniques can be adapted into popular video. It demonstrates how reflexifity and duration can create a unique video.
The duration of our film was influenced by what the dance was ment to represent so in phase 1 it was about the crashing into the water, so these shots became rapid and interchanged.
The reflexivity of where the camera was allowed us to created interesting shot from above angles or spinning round in different directions i felt like this would give the dance another dimension making it more of a dance film than just us filming a dance.
The music video for pulps do you remember the first time is a good example of how these techniques can be adapted into popular video. It demonstrates how reflexifity and duration can create a unique video.
Dance - Camera movement + insporation
As the dance was set under water i thought it would be nice to represent the editing that way, starting off with quick edits becoming more long and flowing as the dance went on, like in waves of movement. I wanted to get the dance from a variety of different angles that we wouldn't normally use as i thought this would look good with the long flowing movements.
Initially molly wrote a shot list, how ever it was a lot of static shots from similar angles. I then when through the dance with her and suggested ways we could make it a little different eg having moving wide shots instead of just static or to get bits of movement as a close up. Molly said that i sounded like i knew what i was doing so to jut go with my gut. I then made a second shot list but with a few changes, i tried to stick to mollies shot list as much as possible as she was the director.
I wanted to have a flow to the dance so its shot cut into each other really nicely, so to we used the rehearsal footage to create the second shoot list.
I cant really explain how i we came up with the movment as it just seemed to happen, i think one of the main things that helped though is we though of the camera as a second dancer so it was in there with the dance and moved along with it.
one of my main influences was this video
as well as this one as it was similar to how we saw our dance
Dance - Rehearsals + Creating the dance
We did 2 sets of rehearsals, the first of which we did with just emma on her own at this point we didnt have a second dancer but we didnt want to waste time and have to rush the routine in one day. The aim of this rehearsal was just to work out some basic moves and see what she was capable of.
We started of by telling her about the over all dance and what we wanted it to look like and then moved on to give her some keywords that related to the themes in our video. It was interesting to see how she reacted to them as she came up with some different things to what we would have thought of. As she didnt have a partner it was hard to kind of start moving on from just forming basic things so we decided to show her some of the videos we looked at for inspiration and sent her home to think it all through.
In the second rehearsal we had to use the su dance floor as we couldnt find a room, this wasn't a problem how ever it did give them a lot of space to practice in which becuase we were filming in a smaller room meant some of the moves they created got made smaller and had less impact.
We started the day similar to what we did in the first rehearsal to see how his moves differed from hers and to start getting basic structure. We then decided it was best to split it up into 3 sections of dance to get the emotions we wanted in each of them. As harry was a choreographer he got the moves we liked and managed to get them into a phase. We then let them experiment and see what they could come up with giving them feed back when needed. We were really lucky to get a choreographer as i feel we would have struggled to get into a finished routine in the time we had.
In the second rehearsal we had to use the su dance floor as we couldnt find a room, this wasn't a problem how ever it did give them a lot of space to practice in which becuase we were filming in a smaller room meant some of the moves they created got made smaller and had less impact.
We started the day similar to what we did in the first rehearsal to see how his moves differed from hers and to start getting basic structure. We then decided it was best to split it up into 3 sections of dance to get the emotions we wanted in each of them. As harry was a choreographer he got the moves we liked and managed to get them into a phase. We then let them experiment and see what they could come up with giving them feed back when needed. We were really lucky to get a choreographer as i feel we would have struggled to get into a finished routine in the time we had.
here is an example of the dance so far
Dance - Post Production
Over easter Lauren started organising the files and arraigning them of the timeline. As the lighting had to change on set i decided to go back through the poem and pick out key bits that we could try and get back in the imagery.
I also watched a tv show called cucumber that a man dies in that and the way it was edited was very dramatic and inspired the way we created the first part of the dance. Unfortunatly i cant find the video online to post here. but it was very fast cuts with different sound in each cut to make it very jumpy and rapid. This also influenced the sound for the first half of the video. Here is an example of our attempt
Once lauren had come up with a rough edit she posted it on the facebook group we made as she was back at home so we couldn't meet up to see it. I then worked out what bits needed to change and made a not of them for when we got into the avid suit.
The rough cut of the video was around 7 minitues long and had a few continuity errors, i then told lauren to take out some large chunks of footage and at some points we re aranged the dance routine to make the continuity flow better. This was rather annoying as they contained some really nice shots how ever int he over all flow of the video it was better to remove a few nice shots than have something that didnt match up.
As our dissertation proposals were due in at the same time as the dance Lauren asked me if i would help by adding the effects to the video that her and kat had filmed. By this point we only had 3 days left until we wanted to export it. I started with the dust particles as i thought this would be easiest but as the lighting had changed they looked very fake and out of place. I then moved on to the bubbles but had several problems the ones we filmed were not in a big enough take so they did not float up to the top of the screen. I tried to find some stock footage ones but they looked very fake or did not move in time with the movements of the dance EG when they span they didnt move with it just flowed upwards. Lauren then made some in after effects how ever they looked un realistic.
I then decided rather than stress out and try and rush something that needed a week at least and a lot of attention to make look realistic and good that it would be better to focus on the other work we have to do and re visit it at another point. I think this frustrated us all as we had spent a lot of time trying to work out how to make this work in the pre production stage it seems annoying to stop at this stage. How ever we are not giving up on the effects and are going to re visit it after the hand in when we have more time to do it to the best it can be. How ever even if we had decided not to do it at the start of planning it wouldnt have changed anything as we would still have had no dancers or rooms so would have just been sat around waiting for soemthing to happen, so i feel its better that we tryied to make the most of time but trying new things and effects even if we havent used them for the hand in.
The main things i felt that were missing were lenses flares, i also thought we could make the dust twinkle in the light to give the same kind of feeling the poem dose.
For the first section of the dance we wanted it to be quite frantic and dissenting and i though we come fade the videos in and out to black or add bright lights in between to heighten this effect similar to this scene int he hunger games
For the first section of the dance we wanted it to be quite frantic and dissenting and i though we come fade the videos in and out to black or add bright lights in between to heighten this effect similar to this scene int he hunger games
Or like in lordes music videos
I also watched a tv show called cucumber that a man dies in that and the way it was edited was very dramatic and inspired the way we created the first part of the dance. Unfortunatly i cant find the video online to post here. but it was very fast cuts with different sound in each cut to make it very jumpy and rapid. This also influenced the sound for the first half of the video. Here is an example of our attempt
Once lauren had come up with a rough edit she posted it on the facebook group we made as she was back at home so we couldn't meet up to see it. I then worked out what bits needed to change and made a not of them for when we got into the avid suit.
The rough cut of the video was around 7 minitues long and had a few continuity errors, i then told lauren to take out some large chunks of footage and at some points we re aranged the dance routine to make the continuity flow better. This was rather annoying as they contained some really nice shots how ever int he over all flow of the video it was better to remove a few nice shots than have something that didnt match up.
We then went through and colour corrected it. Using the research we did from when we were filming underwater i knew that the skin tones had to be really washed out removing most of the red and the yellow as they are the first colours to go, we also had to turn the contrast up to get the black solid.
here is an example of how the colours changed.
I then contacted the musician we found earlier on and asked him to make the demo he sent us a little longer and flow in time with the dance.
As our dissertation proposals were due in at the same time as the dance Lauren asked me if i would help by adding the effects to the video that her and kat had filmed. By this point we only had 3 days left until we wanted to export it. I started with the dust particles as i thought this would be easiest but as the lighting had changed they looked very fake and out of place. I then moved on to the bubbles but had several problems the ones we filmed were not in a big enough take so they did not float up to the top of the screen. I tried to find some stock footage ones but they looked very fake or did not move in time with the movements of the dance EG when they span they didnt move with it just flowed upwards. Lauren then made some in after effects how ever they looked un realistic.
I then decided rather than stress out and try and rush something that needed a week at least and a lot of attention to make look realistic and good that it would be better to focus on the other work we have to do and re visit it at another point. I think this frustrated us all as we had spent a lot of time trying to work out how to make this work in the pre production stage it seems annoying to stop at this stage. How ever we are not giving up on the effects and are going to re visit it after the hand in when we have more time to do it to the best it can be. How ever even if we had decided not to do it at the start of planning it wouldnt have changed anything as we would still have had no dancers or rooms so would have just been sat around waiting for soemthing to happen, so i feel its better that we tryied to make the most of time but trying new things and effects even if we havent used them for the hand in.
Dance - Shoot day
Shoot day was a long and tiring day as i had been awake all night trying to make sure everything was ok as well as emailing schedules due to the room we was in being needed by someone else at specific time and generally just sorting the final plans. After getting 4 hours sleep we got up right and early to transport the equipment across farnham ready to set up at 9am when the room was available.
As we were all tired i told the group id rather us take our time pushing the equipment to uni in trolleys as we didn't have a car, so a we didnt break anything and b we didnt stress ourself out to early. This then set us 30 minitues behind but it was ok as we planned a long set up time to make up for this. However when we started setting up a couple of the light stands wouldn't work correctly, the cables we needed for the samurai blade wasn't in the kit, the bar doors wouldnt work on one of the lights which ment we had to keep going back and forth to stores to try and fix this.
We eventually got the lighting set up how i wanted, how ever as the room was a lot small than the ones we had practised in we couldn't get the right depth of felid to hide the light meaning the light was really visible, so i had to think on my feet and change it slightly and add the lenses flares and details we would loose because of this back in post. Then of course because nothing can be easy the bulbs blew . Eventually we got everything sorted and ready to go but we were an hour and half behind. With us having to be out of the room by 1 we were very pressed for time. To make up for this time as i was the most confident out of the group i told them not to worry and just focus on there rolls. Kat was on continuity, molly i told to watch the dance and movements and make sure they were spot on all of the time and Lauren was 1st ad.
As tom and shaid had not been involved in the process of making the film they were just here to be camera man and gaffer, i had to be very clear about what i wanted and how the shot was going to go. I set up the camera to the right settings whilst they set up the glide cam . I found it very hard to direct a camera crew as im not very good at articulating what i want to do, especially with the flowing moving shots we had. I ended up walking them through the shots using my arm or a rolled up shooting schedule to guide them through the shoots. I really enjoyed working with tom and shahid as they were very efficient and hard working, which because i had a lot of things to focus on made the process a lot smoother.
As the dance had lot of little movements and details we needed to capture the dance was broken down into 4 phase then each one of these broken it blocks of 8 so we could film each block + a bit before/ after to get the detail we wanted as fast was we could. I found it was easier to do it this was as they moved lot and very fast if we tried to film the whole thing in sets like close up it would have become a lot complicated with tom having to move around them really fast. There were some shots where we tried to film it as a whole how ever they just went out of frame or moved away to fast that it didn't look good.
eventually we caught up with time and only became 30 minutes behind. Ideally we could have done with 2 days to make this video as there were so many sections and things to do however i feel like we all worked well as a group to get it done to the best we could.
This shoot out of all the ones i have done so far has been the only one i have enjoyed, i feel thats mainly due to the people we were with as we were all on the same page and wanted to have fun at the same time. I feel there are some things that could have gone better but i will cover that int he evaluation.
Friday, 20 March 2015
Dance - Helping other groups
Today i helped out on Thomas, Lucy and shahid dance shoot doing make up and behind the scenes photography. I got a bit snap happy and ended up taking 300+ images so i thought i would post some of the photos on here :
Shahid setting up lights
Setting up and make up
Lucy stealing diffuser from anne
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Lauren helping with lighting
Couple
Thomas filming
Thomas filming
Dancer
Dacner
Dancer
Serious talk
Dancer
Dancer
Shahid
Thomas with the glide cam
Serious talk
Lucy directing
Thomas and dancer going through shots
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