It's been too long...

A lot has happened in the month since I last blogged; filming for Project Y and Under the Same Sky, both for YDance, designing the website for the masters show, finishing Anne Whitaker's website, fine tuning the details for As the sparks fly upwards... and getting back to work on itch.

Project Y

I was approached by YDance, the national youth dance agency for Scotland for whom I have worked as a freelance dance tutor for many years, to produce documentation and a short introductory documentary to promote their performance project, Project Y. I spent a few afternoons filming rehearsals and getting short interviews with the choreographers and some of the dancers, which I chose to conduct as group interviews rather than one on one to ensure a more relaxed feel to the footage. I then got a team of 2 camera operators and a boom mic operator together for the multi-camera performance shoot. So far, looking through the footage as it's captured, it's looking good. I may need to crop in on the wide angle camera slightly but I had a feeling that would happen as it was difficult to set up in advance due to different lighting states in the theatre.

Under the Same Sky

Also for YDance, this is a short promotional video aimed at young people and those who work with them to promoto YDance's new project, Free to Dance. Free to Dance targets young girls who may be school refusers, exercise refusers or excluded from regular activities for some other reason. For this reason, it was important to YDance to film girls dancing who have not had years of experience and to chat to them about their developments so far. Again I chose to shoot the interview with both girls at the same time to relax them get better material.

Masters Show Website

I decided to use a similar format to my own website for FireBox as it makes use of an iframe thus minimising the amount of parts which need to load for each page, keeping the design a simple grey on white allows the work to speak for itself. The main problem has been getting all the information I needed from people in a short amount of time. It seems that deadlines often fall on deaf ears, even when they are reasonable and take dissertation deadlines into account. Eventually I got it altogether but am now waiting on the server details so I can upload it. Typical.


Anne Whitaker

www.anne-whitaker.com is now up and running. The website was fairly simple to put together as Anne was keen to use a blog template that she could add to gradually. We decided that the best way forward would be for me to meet with her on a weekly(ish) basis and teach her the basics of blogging. She started with almost no knowledge but proved to be a quick learner and within 10 sessions is now happy to go it alone.

As the sparks fly upwards...

The film clips have been finalised and I'm constantly adding to a music playlist so that the room is filled with a full range of tracks that will be shuffled and on a loop. I'm still in the process of making the hanging screen but part of this needs to be done at the installation so that the size is perfect for the projection. I'm keen to get the screen as accurately sized as possible to give the piece a feel of things floating in space visually.


itch

It's been a long slog for itch, one that seems to go on the back burner as soon as another project raises its head so I'm determined to get this finished within the next week. I think the problem is that I'm so clear on what I want the finished project to look like I've convinced myself it'll be a five minute job that can be done at any point. In reality I know it'll take a little longer than that.

Project Y

YDance has asked to produce a DVD of their performance project, Project Y, this summer. The DVD is to include an intro section featuring interviews with dancers and clips from rehearsals and classes as well as documentation of the live performance itself.

It's a relief to get some work for the summer as well as the opportunity to make contact with the choreographers working on Project Y and, of course, all that young talent.

It's a DOG's Life!

After the excitement of the multi-camera filming of Scottish Dance Theatre's performance and Interactive it was down to the serious business of editing it all. We decided that I would do DOG and Rosie would do the Interactive with Vilte doing Tenderhook although she seems to have been asking for DOG footage all this week so I'm not entirely sure what she's doing.

The deadline for DOG is tomorrow and the multi-cam editing workshop was last Thursday which left me eight days to learn it, do it and burn it all to a quality that SDT can show at an event in Athens. Although it wasn't really eight days, it was three because of other commitments then two because of bad weather. All this was made worse by the fact that I've been feeling ill all week and struggling through a urine infection. On top of all that when it actually came down to editing I was pretty much left to my own devices which was fine until I needed help and I ended up relying on Derricks Linton and Blackie for assistance.

Particular learning curves have been...
double check that the edit suite is actually booked for the time it's required
if you start in Edit 1-5 you can't move to Edit 6-10 to continue your work
if someone looks at your work in Edit 1-5 you then can't use the multi-camera viewing function in Edit 6-10 even if they haven't changed anything
burning takes longer than editing especially when you've never been shown the software and you're struggling to make the film small enough to put onto DVD.

It's all done now but it hasn't been an easy week and to top it all off I was really interested in doing the After Effects workshop at the start of the week but obviously couldn't because of this work. Thankfully I can get back to my own stuff next week and am looking forward to the Interactive workshop with Jaygo.