When UNIT 8 was first introduced to us, it had been said that we get to choose the theme of the project so I thought I would challenge myself to make a film about dance. In my mind, I pictured the film being about a girl struggling to keep her passion for dance alive, as her parents would support her more on painting. I had few ideas of how the project would run smoothly and how I am going to make the dance film, however the only thing I didn’t have was a dancer. So I emailed the dance teacher if she could let her students know that I am looking for a dancer. I gave it a week for someone to contact me, and while waiting I made a list with the things I would do for the film, what I would research and other things I had to do to create a successful project.
After a week I thought no one was interested so I changed the theme of the project from dance to painting art. The plot was similar, but it had a few different parts. So again, I made plans of what I could do for this theme, but I also emailed the dance teacher to remind her students that I am still looking for dancers. The next day I got a response that someone was interested in being part of the film, so I went back to the dance theme because it was my initial idea and I had better plans for it. Not only did I get a dancer, but two. I thought that if I had 2 dancers, it will be even better and I would do 2 types of dance: contemporary and ballet dance.
The first thing I did for my Final Major Project, was to make a list of the tasks I would have to complete to help me keep everything in control and I decided that I would do task by task to make sure I finished 1 out of how many I have in total. I like to keep things organised, so doing task by task means that I would complete one task and then I would write about what I did here, in the Reflective Diary.
The first task was to write in the brief a few words in each box explaining techniques/ideas we could use for our project.
I decided to put all the references in wordpress on a site page because I thought it will look better there and I could write each task and the the references from that specific task.
For the timetable, I did not write any date for when I started as I don’t remember, but I did note down the date I finished because I remembered to do so.
The next task I decided to do is the Themes.
The Themes task is the one where you write about 10 different ideas of what you could do, and it’s supposed to help you guide towards the best idea and make the best out of it. I personally already thought of a theme I would choose long before I started doing the themes, but I still had to do the other ones because it would be good creativity.
For every theme I would have to write a bit about it and maybe write an interesting fact or what makes it so special, and then I would also have to write what I could do with that idea, whether it would have been a film, a documentary etc.
The 10 themes I chose to write about were: Photography, Sculpting, Drawing, Dancing, Graffiti, Architecture, Conceptual, Mosaic and Still Life Art.
For each theme I wrote a small paragraph to explain what it means and maybe a bit of a history for some of them to show why are they considered art these days. Then, for each theme I wrote a small potential idea of what I could do for my final project if I were to choose that specific theme.
Then I asked one person for each theme to give me a short feedback on what they think of the idea/theme. I asked a different person for each theme because I wanted to have different opinions.
The next task was to write a Proposal of what I could film for my project and firstly, I wrote a bit about what I am planning to have in the film and about the people. For example, I wrote that I need to find 2 dancers, and that I would prefer them to be contemporary and ballet dancers, because when I imagined that I would make a film about dance, I would have a contemporary dancer. The ballet dancer was a bonus for my film. Even though I had to change my film, it wasn’t something drastic. I kept the same idea, but I added another character.
Then, also in the proposal I wrote the plot of the film. I wrote what the characters will do, for example how the story will go from one character to another one, giving the chance for both of them to have their own story.
The reason why I made them strangers is because I didn’t want to have one story, but 2 where each character has the opportunity to share their story.
After the proposal, we had to do some research, more exactly primary and secondary research.
For my primary research I decided that I am going to find out more about people’s perspectives about dance, so I created 3 questions for dancers and 3 questions for people who don’t practice dance, in which 2 of them were the same and one different. The reason being that one question was different is because I also wanted to ask the dancers about their experience, and I obviously I could not ask the same question to people who don’t dance. So to make it fair, 3 questions for each, I created a question for people who don’t dance asking them that if they would have had the chance or wish to be a dancer, what type of dance they would like to practice.
I also compared them in a few sentences talking about how if people would read all of the answers, they would easily now who the dancers are.
For my secondary research I analysed a few videos taken from YouTube. The first video I analysed was a girl performing a contemporary dance choreography, and I wrote a few words about the shots/angles taken, for example how the girl started being filmed up-close and then it got more further away as the choreography started progressing.
For the ballet part in the secondary research, I talked about how some shots were also taken up close which helped me film a similar shot.
Another task we had to do was to write a 1000 words essay about our chosen theme. Mine being dance, I started writing what is dance in a short definition and then I started writing why I think people don’t like to dance, or maybe they do but they’re afraid.
Then I also wrote about success and failure because I think it’s an important step towards the career of being a dancer. I felt that it is a subject a lot of people fear to talk about when it comes to making a career of something you like doing, whether it’s dance, music etc. The reason being is that we all know that not everyone succeeds with their chosen career leaving up to them to choose whether they want to try again or try to make a different career.
I also wrote in a few words how dance started, evolved over the years and dance today because I thought it will be interesting to find out how dance was back in the days.
Since the film was more focused on contemporary and ballet dance, I thought I would write a few paragraphs about each one. For the ballet dance, I wrote about types of it so to explain better I’ve put one example of a performance/video to each type.
A very important task we had to do was to make references on the information we took from different websites/books etc. All the information taken by me was from websites and to create references, I used the citethisforme website using the Harvard referencing. I created a different site page for it because I thought it would look more organised.
Another task we had to do was to make experiments we could use to help us make out film better by adding effects, transitions etc.
My experiments were the followings: angles, trying to fit the choreography from different angles, colour grading, music, transitions, text messages experiment, scrolling credits, fading out the music, 2 videos in 1 scene.
For the first experiment I had as examples 2 videos with different technique of filming and because I couldn’t decide which one to use, I used both. I did not use only the one where I would have to move in sync with the dancer because I wanted to show the dancer from a far away shot, and I did not use only the far away shot because the camera couldn’t really capture the dancer’s face.
For the second experiment I had the dancer do the choreography twice so when I edit it, I will change from one shot to another.
The third experiment was all about the colour grading because the lightning from the first take of the choreography was different from the other take of the choreography (I did it twice). The reason why it was different is because the first time I filmed the choreography of the dancer I placed the camera in the corner of the studio so I could get a far away shot and he second time I filmed the dance closer so I could capture her face and shots up close like dance moves but more detailed. So using the colour grading board on Premiere Pro, I changed the vibrance to a lower number. I made the whole dance scene a greyish colour because that seemed to me to work the best, in terms of lightning/colouring.
The forth experiment see the experiments page.
For the fifth experiment I used some transitions to show that the scene in the dance studio was finished and I thought that if I add a ‘dip to black’ transition it will look better than start another scene straight away.
The sixth experiment was to add in the scene the text messages on the screen. To do that I tried to follow a tutorial, but then one classmate decided to show me a easier way to achieve the experiment. What I did was to get a video with the background of a text message (see the example down below) and then to take out the green screen from the video, I used an effect in Premiere Pro called ‘Ultra’. Then I cut the video leaving only one row of the text message because I only needed on. I put the text so it synced with the video and it was a successful experiment.
The seventh experiment was to create the scrolling credits where I credited the dancers, the production, the music etc. The way I did it is written in experiments page.
The seventh experiment was the music fading and I found that a bit trickier because since I filmed the choreography twice, they weren’t the same and I do not blame the dancers because they had a short time to prepare the choreography. I did manage to put the dance scene together, along with the music, however one issue in the film is that the first dance scene, and I’m talking about the music, I had to fade the music as the song was longer than the choreography.
For the ninth experiment I tried to put 2 videos together to show that the action happens in the same time, like a collage. The reason being is because I thought it will add a bit of drama exit from both of them, for example them going in the opposite directions, but it looks like they start from the same place because the videos are next to each other as a collage.
Issues and problem solving while creating the plot of the film:
Originally, I wanted to make a film about a dancer struggling to keep dancing while her/his parents kept pushing her/him towards other things, anything apart from dance.
To find the dancer, I asked the dance teacher in the college if she could let her students know that I’m looking for someone to be in the film and after an unsuccessful week or two, I thought about changing the dancer to one art (painting) lover. I wrote the plot, which did not take me long because I kept the same idea where the art lover is keeping the secret that she/he loves to paint.
However the next day, I got an email from a dancer saying that she wants to be part of the film which was good news for me because I planned on making a dance film for a long time so when I got the email I went back to the original idea. Then that dancer said she has a friend who wants to be part of the film as well so I changed the film idea to having 2 dancers that struggle to keep dancing.
The making of ‘ENOUGH’:
The locations where I filmed are: Dance studio (in the college), college hallways, entrance of college, streets near college. The reason why I filmed close to the college was because the dancers I filmed with, had only 2 hours break a day so we filmed the dance scenes in one day and the outside scenes the next day.
I had to film 2 dancers doing their choreography and I had each of them do it twice for the close and further away shots. At that moment I did not realise that the first time filming the choreography didn’t match the second time as in the choreography was different. However, I did manage to put the choreography together to fit so it’s not very noticeable that there are dance moves missing.
I tried filming the dancers going outside the college and I’ve been told to delete the footage because I accidentally filmed the security as well, which I did not notice while filming so I went outside the college and I filmed the dancers coming out from the inside.
To edit the film, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017.