Live Project

  

Notes from the first meeting with the dance department on the 28th 

28th September 2012

Notes from lesson with Alison about the essay 

I am working in a group with Dami, Domenic, and Moody, and we are working on the project entitled 'The Anything Box' a conceptual piece based on a short story about a box in which imagination comes alive. We have been drafted to create three pieces to go with the dance piece they are creating. The first picture above shows what we have been briefed to create. They would like a piece depicting either natural, outdoors landscape becoming industrial or a piece which flips between outdoor landscapes and industrial ones. They would also like a piece which is psychedelic to do with focus, close ups, is trippy, perhaps of the final dance but distorted to look cool and weird. The hearts desire piece is the final piece which they want to be focussing on the idea of feet on grass, travelling over grass, flow etc.

3rd October 2012
Dami and I researched ideas that we had seen in other things that had a psychedelic look to them. We thought about time lapse, and nature being trippy, so things like animals decomposing time lapsed and  fruit decomposing. We also looked at optical illusions, and kaleidoscope effects. We also liked the idea of clouds, smoke and other natural imagery over layed over video of people dancing. We thought about in Dumbo the dancing elephants section and the colours used in that. We made a prezi from these ideas and we are going to present them in the video and from the feedback of the dance department move forward and try and create a video with their and our ideas in mind.




11th October 2012
We had our meeting with the dance department to see what they thought of our ideas. We showed them the ideas in this prezi: 
<http://prezi.com/xdhnnakb4vtn/trippy-ideas/?kw=view-xdhnnakb4vtn&rc=ref-12169162>
They said that they liked the ideas but that it was a bit darker than what they had pictured, so we thought about Coraline, and the sequence in the garden, perhaps lighter colours, and if we were to use the decomposing animals to have them transforming into other things. They liked the optical illusion, and kaleidoscope  and if the video was from lots of different perspectives.

Dami and I have been downloading a variety of clips to build up a collection of clips to use for the final project. We've been going for a psychedelic nature feel, the brief suggests a Tim Burtonesque feel to the piece, so dark, with odd colour hues, blues so we're building on that idea.

The movie Coraline is a film which is for children, but when you watch it the visuals and the ideas and the imagery are a juxtaposition with what you'd normally expect from a children's movie, this image from Coraline shows the colours and image inspiration for the final piece. I like the shapes and nice colours used in the background especially. 

http://year2budeg.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/mood-board-live-project.html

This is a link to a variety of screen caps of the various footage that I've got. 

Email from Jodie with some ideas about the music she might use 

Friday 2nd November
Jodie emailed us on Friday and gave us some ideas about what sort of music we might expect the film to be and how long the piece is going to be. The music is quite diverse with a central theme of carnival/circus. We were considering making a stop motion piece of animation of ribbons for the final piece.

They sent us the final piece of music which we listened to and thought about as how it would reflect in the visuals. It's a piece of carnival sounding dubstep, which has an interesting haunting childish vibe, which reflects the story the anything box. It's an interesting piece of music which I can imagine working well with the right dance piece.

9th November 2012
On Friday we had a meeting again with the dance department. They said they wanted eyes to be part of the piece, so eyes going in and out of focus, we said we could film that.  We discussed organising a green screen to make the eyes and asked if it would be possible for them to consider us using some of their dancers in the green screen and if we were to do this who they wanted to be used in the green screen. It was possible that the people we might use are integral to the story. 

19th November 2012

Dance Rehearsal 2 from Melissa Whitehouse on Vimeo.

Dance Rehearsal from Melissa Whitehouse on Vimeo.
Password: budeg

We filmed the dance rehearsal so we could get some idea of what was going to be in the show and get a feel for what the dance is like. It really helped because when we were doing the green screen we could see what we wanted to film and we got to see what the dancers were part of. We also saw what was going on in the different parts of the music so we could plan for the edit, and decide what sort of clips to use. It is different to what I had imagined, so it was good to see what the piece looks like in order to create what they want

22nd November

Green screen filming: Today we filmed the green screen to use in the AV we were creating for the dance department. We filmed close ups of various dancers eyes, Jodie also asked us to film the arms of a certain bit of the dance, we did this. We filmed a variety of dancers, and we asked for Jodie to pick students who she thought would be photogenic and who she would like used in the edit. We also filmed the pois and various ribbon movements. This will be good in the final edit because for what Jodie explained as her creative vision of the AV the ribbons would feed well into the final visuals. The dancers were really useful and experimented and helped us with getting the final footage we needed. The green screen was fun to do, and the dancers took direction well, they followed our directions and were fast and we got through everything we needed to do in the time we had. It was especially helpful because after we'd though we finished we remembered that Jodie wanted us to film the pois and we found the two dancers with the pois who were happy to come back with us and film the pois. This was challenging for them because it was difficult for them to hold their arms up for such a long time. 

Our dancer doing the bit Jodie asked us to film on the green screen

Setting up the green screen

Me and Ken stretching the sheet to get the creases out

This is the main part of the music, for the dance piece. There is a music box style intro before this that I have begun editing with clips of nature and wildlife for the first 1 minute 36 seconds, and then the Mojo Carnival music begins, Dami and I are going to use less natural looking real footage for the carnival bit of the edit, because the music is a lot faster and energetic. We like the music because it has notable changes in pace and style so it's good to edit to, also having seen the dance it goes well with the movement style. 

29th November 2012

Today I am editing the faster bits of music, using footage from the itunes website and other colourful but dark clips. I am trying to create a piece that is quick and exciting for the main part of the dance. Tomorrow I will show Dance what I have been working on and see what they think of it so far.
For the green screen wide shots I am using 8 point garbage matte, to crop the bits of green screen out of the shot.
I used this tutorial to remind me how to use it.




1st December 2012
I came to a stalemate with the editing today, looking at the clips again and again I couldn't see what I wanted to achieve anymore. I went back to the original brief and looked over and I'm downloading some more stock footage to try and bring a different vibe to what I've been working with at the moment.

The editing is also quite difficult at the moment because of the rendering. I am getting an external hardrive so that hopefully editing will be quicker, but at the moment I'm just having to make do, which is hindering the process further. 

4th December

I organised a meeting with Jodie so I could show her what we've done so far. It was helpful that Jodie was responsive, we had a good dialogue going that allowed us to converse and communicate any of our needs and hopefully she felt that she was able to communicate her ideas to us. 

6th December 2012 

We had a meeting today with the dance department and showed them our rough edit the feedback they had that they liked the ribbons on Dami's and the squares at the end of mine, they wanted the screen to rotate and it to be faster cuts and and crazier in general. At the beginning they wanted bubbles as well because they are going to have bubbles blowing. They cut the bit of the beginning with the music box, and weren't using that bit of the music any more, so we've removed that from the edit, this was frustrating because we'd created the beginning bit, and finished it, but it has also saved us time grading and removing watermarks, it's good that they're able to give us feedback like this and it also means that we can consider using the footage from the beginning in the Mojo Carnival music bit. We are trying to create a more trippy more colourful piece so if we can incorporate this then we can consider it for the final piece. We were looking for footage of bubbles but it's quite hard to find stock footage of bubbles blown in the air, it was more bubbles in water. They also cut the first minute and a half of our footage out of the edit, they weren't using the music box part of the music and as such our bit of the edit that went with that bit of the music was not needed anymore, it was a shame to have to get rid of this because we had worked hard on it, but of course this is the nature of working with a client, and meeting their needs that we were able to drop that bit of the piece and move on with the rest of the edit, there's no point dwelling on what isn't needed. We will keep the found footage from this bit and see if we can use it in the final edit.

16th December 2012
I am creating my final edit for the dance piece, Dami and I have agreed that I will create my final edit today, and tomorrow we will meet, I will give her my edit and she will add her edit to mine to create an amalgamated edit of the bits the dancer teachers said they liked the most. We're doing this because it's been sort of difficult to create two different edits, and then have bits which we both like but not having them together, so we've come up with this solution. We work quite well as team and so there are bits of the editing in her piece that I admire and bits in my piece that she admires. I think it's a good way of editing because when we come to the final piece we will have created a piece that is two different interpretations of the dance teachers ideas, and so hopefully closer to what they wanted with positive creative input in it.

I'm currently putting in different bits of footage according to what the dance teachers liked and didn't like it's taking forever to edit, because each render is taking a minimum of 20 minutes, so that's making the process quite time consuming. I just reversed clip of fireworks using the advice on this website,
<http://www.geniusdv.com/weblog/archives/playing_clip_backwards_in_final_cut_pro.php>
I wanted an explosion where the beginning of the music reaches a high point, but the fireworks I found were in reverse, so I've reversed the reverse and made them the right way. It's handy to be able to find the answer to all of my editing problems either on the internet or from people in my group, because it means that I am learning new things as well as working as part of my team. I've enjoyed the editing process because it's given me the scope to realise my creative visions, I also feel that the editing process has allowed me to see that in the future I can dream bigger with projects and I am not limited to my current knowledge. It has also given me visions for my major project and I am trying to stretch my scope so that my project will test my skills. I would have liked to have done some more colour grading on the piece, but because one of my only problems with my edit, is that because it was found footage all of the footage looks different so if I had had more time I would have colour corrected the piece.

17th December 2012
Today I handed over my copy to Dami,  I brought all of the files in on my hardrive and transferred them to her computer, in order that she might hand them over to the dance department. I brought in all of the files that I had used throughout the edit as well as ones we had acquired, this was in order to ensure that after we had completed the edit to the fullest of our potential on the hand in date, if further changes were needed to be made then that would be possible. We discussed what changes I had made and what changes she planned to make and agreed on the hand in arrangements and finalised our plans. This was to ensure that there would be no final complications. Our organisation of our time was vital during the whole project, because working as a team it was important that we kept in contact and also knew what the other one was doing, this was to save time and to ensure that the project was as streamlined as possible.

19th December 2012
Today Dami tried to hand in the final edit she had done of our piece for the dance department. She went into Brit and attempted to contact the dance teachers but to no avail, Ken said that since we had gotten approval of our piece on the 6th of December and we had made the changes they asked for this would be enough.

This is our final piece.

I think if we have a look at the various inputs that we suggested that the dance teachers suggested we reflected that, the colours we've used, plus the natural imagery that we've used have been fitting with the idea of the Amelie influence, I've always tried to maintain the colour themes similar to the Amelie picture referenced earlier in the blog, kind of a ethereal, but childlike qualities to the colours I have chosen reflect the idea that the anything box is essentially the creation of a child, an imaginary place where the child goes, but with the influence of the teacher, and the whole idea of a dream sequence. I think the final piece is a good compliment to mine and Damilola's individual ideas that held power, I liked especially the effects she used on the facial close ups to make them non-static, and I appreciated how she kept my initial build up into the song as it was a bit of my edit which I thought was good. The person form that I used in the end was a bit of the edit that I wasn't keen on but when I showed it to the dance department they liked it so I included it in the final edit, so I think that goes to show that the feedback and all the meetings we had are important because without that feedback I wouldn't have included something that they really liked. As well as this they asked for bubbles which Damilola added which was good because I had looked for bubble footage and been unable to find any which suited the edit but I feel the bubbles she used worked in the final edit. I think also I like the shapes and how she used them in the final piece. I would have liked to have some input from Jodie because I would like to have known what her opinions on the final piece were but I think it's important to keep in mind that the dance show isn't till February so if necessary I can do more editing on the piece, I think within the time limit I have met the expectations of where I would like to be and the final product is one that Damilola and I are happy to have produced.

For me making this piece, I really enjoyed the process, I liked working as part of a group and I enjoyed the editing, it was nice to develop my technical skills and I look forward to the next term and hopefully developing them more. I hope the dance piece meets the dance teachers expectations and I wish them all the luck with the dance show, I look forward to seeing my piece and what place it has in their dance show.