Preparation update (Blog Post 10)
A blog post by: Kelsey Reid
GoFundMe
Within 2 weeks we had raised our target goal of £150 to fund our film! This will allow us to finance the production costs of our film. We are also likely to have to pay a cost to shoot at a cafe and so hopefully our budget will cover this, as well as all the props needed to be purchased.
Café search
At the beginning, our search for a café wasn’t all that successful:
Chichini – This cafe were charging us £100 to film after 3pm-8pm. This would take up a large sum of our budget.
LS6 – They were only providing us with 1 hour to film, either really early in the morning, or late in the evening. Despite the time of day we filmed, 1 hour would not be enough time for us to set up lighting and cover all our shots.
Café Gaia – This was a café at the university. They were charging us at least £128 to film there due to security needing to open up the café etc. Again, this would take up too much of our budget.
Kapow Coffee – Would not allow filming
House of Koko – Would not allow filming at the café for the full 4 hours we had requested, which is the length of time we felt was needed to film all of our shots for our scene.
Coffee on the Cresent – Didn't get back to us in regard to filming
Café at Leeds Beckett Student Union – Would only allow us 2 hours’ worth of filming, which again wouldn’t be enough time for us to cover everything needed.
Pump n Grind – This was the last café we contacted. They informed us that they charge £15 p/h to film at their location. Therefore, this would cost us a total of £60, which our budget would be able to cover. Pump n Grind are closed on Sunday – Tuesday and so we felt it ideal to request to film on one of these days when they are closed so that there would be less interruptions when filming. And with that we had finally confirmed a date to film our café scene – Sunday 24thMarch, 10am – 2pm.
Paper Work
Filming at a café was not covered by the generic risk assessment made for the BA2 experimental filmmaking module. Therefore, the P16b form had to printed off and signed by the café. In addition, a separate risk assessment for the café needed to be filled out. This was all completed and checked off by Helena.
Choosing the dancer
All the applicants for this role were from the Northern Contemporary Dance School:
Name: Marina
Languages: English + Catalan + Spanish
Gender: Female
Work provided: [Click to see Marina's Vimeo page]
Notes: Not available during intended filming days, only available from the start of the Easter break. Even though we would be willing to film during the Easter break if absolutely necessary, our group knows that we need plenty of time for post-production as a lot this film will come together during the edit and working with sound design etc. Therefore, it would be best for us to avoid filming in the easter break.
Name: Manon
Languages: English + French
Gender: Female
Work provided:
Notes: [The same as Mariana]
Name: Yvette Levine
Languages: English + Hungarian
Gender:Female
Work provided: Emailed her CV and sent in some dance images that can be seen below
Notes: As impressed as were by Yvette's CV and her amazing photos, when contacting her to find out her availabilities, she informed us she was out of the country until May. Evidently, she could no longer be considered for the part due to that being way outside of the deadline for our specific filming dates
Name: Louis
Languages: English + Spanish
Gender: Male
Work provided: [Click to see Louis's instagram page]
Notes: Being born in England but spending over 7 years of his life growing up in South America, Louis was able to speak Spanish as well as English. He provided the team with his Instagram account where we were able to view some of his dancing videos and we loved what we saw! In addition, when meeting him in person I could tell by his personality that he would get on with the team, be easy to work with and was super excited about the film idea from the very beginning. During the meeting it also came to light that Louis has had previous experience in screen dance filmmaking and found what worked really well was the art of improvisation, which was one of the things he specialises in when it comes to dance. This impressed me as I felt this would mean he would be very flexible on the day and would be able to adapt to any kind of beat/soundtrack provided to him. Therefore, the team came to the decision to select Louis as our main role.
Choosing the actors
We got all the actors who applied to send in an audition tape from a sample of the script. The following actors sent in a video audition for the café worker role:
Sean: Sean sent in a fairly decent performance, however, it was noted by one of the members in our group that Sean had acted in one of the drama productions last semester and was known to not be a good actor and found it difficult to follow directions, notes and cues given by the director. Therefore, we decided not to go with him either.
Sam: Though in Sam's self-tape he fully capture the personality of the character as described in the script, we felt that he performed the most believable character for this role. Finding out that Sam was available for the date we selected for rehearsals and our intended shooting date – we chose to select him for the role of the 'cafe worker'.
The following people were considered for the role of 'Sasha' who teaches 'Leonardo' how to ask for a glass of water in English. Therefore, this actor needed to be willing to deliver a couple of lines in Spanish:
Naomi: Was able to speak English, Spanish and Portuguese. She seemed perfect for the role and her 'StarNow' casting profile showed she had plenty experience to be able to play this role well. Unfortunately, Naomi wasn't available on Sunday 24th March to film the cafe scene, or on set day for rehearsals. Therefore, as everything was already set in place and forms were signed, we weren't able to select Naomi for this role.
Emilie: Though only being able to speak English, Emilie was willing to learn a couple of her lines in Spanish. Due to the time in which this casting call was sent out, we didn't have time for actors to send in a self-tape. Therefore, we relied on looking at their StarNow casting profiles. Emilie had a lot of great recommendations and was considered by StarNow as a 'pro'. Finding out that Emilie was both available during our designated rehearsal time and filming day, we selected her for this role.
Dance brief
It is noted that “One of the features of screen work is that the dancer may have little comprehension of how the completed work will appear” (Dodds, 2001). This is especially true with our film as much of the dance is intended to be cut up in post-production, in order to fit in with the beat of the soundtrack as well as to create a disoriented feel as we slowly build up the climax. In this way, the dance that Louis performs may appear completely different in the final cut of the film. Therefore, we felt it necessary to provide Louis with a dance brief which highlighted the theme of our film – ‘Internal struggle’. This would then allow this idea of struggle, entrapment and a sense of desperation to break free from such, come forth in Louis’s performance, thus providing our film with stronger content.
Set design
In one of our tutor meetings the group discussed different ways we could design the set. We were certain that we wanted to the set walls to be blacked out (as justified in preparation' blog post). It was suggested that perhaps we put images of things that symbolised ‘Spain’ on the walls as this would subtly represent ‘Leonardo’s’ struggle to communicate outside of the Spanish language. This reminded us one of the past student experimental films titled 'La facade’ which the set design of the objects placed behind the characters head played a big part of telling the story of the film and worked really well.
Therefore, I put to together a little montage of silhouettes of things that are known to represent Spain:
The idea behind this set design was to make it extremely subtle and so any use of the Spanish colours were avoided, just the black silhouettes of the symbols were used. This was going to be stuck on the wall beside Leonardo’s head in Scene 1 (head banging scene). In order to create a 3D effect of the silhouette, black tissue paper was used as can be seen below:
What we felt was that if this was used in our film, it would take too much attention off of Leonardo on more on the objects around him. ‘Leonardo’ is the centre of this film after all and we wanted to keep the audience’s attention on him and his internal struggle and so we decided not to go with this idea.
Translation
We managed to get a Spanish-speaking translator 'Julia' to help out with translating the specific lines that were currently written in English in the script, into Spanish. Julia was present on both the rehearsal days to teach Emile her Spanish lines and on the filming days to ensure the actors were saying the right things in Spanish. This was important because for all we know the actors could have been saying the wrong thing in Spanish, not making sense, or even worse, saying something offensive as a joke. If this was to take place without the translator being present, none of us in the room would have known as no one in our film team speaks Spanish and consequently could have caused us serious issues down the line if this film was selected to enter into the film festival circuit.
Translation
We managed to get a Spanish-speaking translator 'Julia' to help out with translating the specific lines that were currently written in English in the script, into Spanish. Julia was present on both the rehearsal days to teach Emile her Spanish lines and on the filming days to ensure the actors were saying the right things in Spanish. This was important because for all we know the actors could have been saying the wrong thing in Spanish, not making sense, or even worse, saying something offensive as a joke. If this was to take place without the translator being present, none of us in the room would have known as no one in our film team speaks Spanish and consequently could have caused us serious issues down the line if this film was selected to enter into the film festival circuit.
Additional films watched
'LOVEBYTES' is a Screendance film which follows a man who expresses the journey of heartbreak through dance and by the use of British Sign Language. This film was viewed in relevance to our film because 'communication' is one of its themes (as seen through the sign language) like ours. Even though we don't know what the man is saying in sign language, his emotions of heartbreak is clearly evident through his dance. Similarly, though much of our film is in Spanish we also hope the dance in our film to embody our own central theme 'struggle'. Therefore, this is further reason why it was important to give our dance a dance brief, so they could encapsulate the emotion of struggle in their performance.
'Motion Control' has a great use of sound design! Our film will also heavily rely on sound design as it will make up the beat and soundtrack that the entirety of our film will be cut in sync too. In addition, the scary, almost mysterious ora about the film was beautifully done, which again is largely enhanced by the films use of sound design.
'ATTENTION' is a Ramma Mosley screen dance film. What stood out in this film in relation to our own screen dance film was again it's use of sound design. Moreover, like what we aim to do in our film, it is specifically the diegetic sounds in this film that makes up the basis of the sound track and is the beat that the dancers dance too.
Additional references
Dodds, S. 2001. Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art.UK: Palgrave Macmillan
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