First Steps FILM

First Steps ended up very different to its concept, but it's development ended up creating what I feel is a better film in some ways. Originally the film was conceptualised as a one shot fluid and gradual dance with increasing excentuation, but after meetings with Rachel, the idea of repeating a sequence with the excentuation increasing between scenes was one that I felt would help to pace and emphasise the films intention better. It was also quite difficult to create a sequence to excentuate that was long enough, without making it feel like their sequence didn't make much sense. Also, seeing these actions without the emphasis, would make the excentuated movement more clear.

When it came to choreography, it was hard to find a dancer that wasn't home for Easter, it ended up pushing me so far back that I ended up finding Victor to dance for me quite last minute. In a number of ways I'm releaved that this ended up happening, the dance style I had chosen was a result, in a way, of a kind of fear of exploring any other type of dance, with the dance I had choreographed being different and behind the change of concept, Victor and I thought it best for it to be something he improvised, and chose the music for. This fit the concept way better, with the idea being that the subject was becoming less self conscious, and dancing more honestly fit better to the improvised movement.

Filming was a strange one. I filmed on my DSLR , handheld, which was something I had wanted for the sake of any tracking. But I had decided to work my filming technique into the dance to a degree, I wanted to move more as Victor did. I wasn't too confident with this, but I found myself feeling more comfortable moving with him as he danced with more excentuation. The first sequence is one that I wish I had used a tripod for all of it, since the cleaner tracking would've fit it better, but it just never crossed my mind until editing, not to mention a few focus issues, which went unnoticed until the edit. The second sequence is well filmed, I feel, I'm happy with the way it turned out, I feel like it leads well. But the 3rd sequence is an odd one. Victor blew it out the water, his performance was woah. But at timd the lighting gets dreadful, and the shot is sometimes too close whenever myself and Victor crossed one another.

Another aspect I wish I'd taken more care with was the diegetic sound, the focus artifacts, and sometimes the reverb wound up just ruining certain clips to an unfixable state. But this was due to time restrictions, I never managed to get my mic. The music also suffered from this, having to be uncopywrited, royalty free, where I had planned to compose my own. The music Victor played was copyrighted, unfortunately, because he had played so well with those tracks.

As for the edit, aside from the sound artifacting, things went quite smoothly (EDIT; NEVERMIND), and the edit came together quite well, in my opinion, there was an issue with the final take of me appearing in a mirror, which I solved with an aggressive track I wish I'd done more gradually.