Kelsey's Evaluation (Blog Post 16)
Taking on the roles: Director, Producer and Screenwriter, I had to organise the production of this project, find and communicate with actors, liaise with café’s, raise funds, manage a budget, direct actor’s actions, form a script and communicate my vision to the rest of the team etc.
Finding a dancer who could choreograph their own dance, act and was bi-lingual, proved to be one of my biggest challenges at the start. However, with guidance from my tutor I began reaching out to a variety of dance clubs and institutions, including “Northern School of Contemporary Dance” which is where we found our dancer – Louis. This taught me the need to be persistent and brave enough to call places up to get immediate responses. As producer, I then applied these qualities to other tasks I undertook e.g. raising funds, searching for cafés and negotiating prices.
As a director, it was a challenge when communicating the vision in my head to members of my team because of this film’s abstract concept. Additionally, when approaching such a film as this, it’s important to have a great "understanding of movement, framing, editing, music and soundtracks.” (CreativeScotland, 2018) which I know I need to improve on to help when communicating my vision in the future.
I am pleased with the way ‘Agua’ turned out. One it’s best features is its multiple layers that are then married together to create a feeling of Leonardo’s struggle and entrapment.
Contemporary screen dance films
[See full film here]
Using a series of jump cuts, diegetic sounds, carefully selected atoms tracks and various scenes of the protagonist’s body, this 50 second screen dance film, creates an eerie, uncanny feeling.
ABADDON
The use of the smoke makes the film look more visually appealing, but as we get to the end of the film, we realise the use of smoke was used to reveal that the female is a ghost.
Both these films are experimental, but their choice of creative elements isn’t just a matter of ‘art for art’s sake’ but are purposeful and specific to their chosen subject. Similarly, I feel that each of the layers in ‘Agua’ hold meaning that point towards the film’s central theme and message. Therefore, this and the films powerful use of sound design and a well put together edit, I believe, in this sense, ‘Agua’ presently holds similar significance amongst other screen dance films in its field.
One concern I have is that audiences won’t make the link between the prominent whispering ‘Tienes Agua’ in the mind sequence and the repetition of this phrase by Leonardo in the reality sequence. Therefore, as the screenwriter, I would have Louis repeat the phrase ‘Tienes Agua’ almost immediately when we enter into the reality scene to make this link clearer.
Overall, this module has allowed me to learn a lot about my strengths and weaknesses as a filmmaker and has pushed my creative abilities to then apply to future projects.
Additional References:
Creative Scotland. 2018. In Motion: capturing the evolving world of screen dance. Accessed: 01 May 2019.
URL: https://www.creativescotland.com/explore/read/stories/dance/2018/in-motion-creating-dance-for-screen
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