Somewhere between the first post and this I became really overwhelmed by what I wanted to do. I didn't know if I wanted to make something incredibly complex or simple but effective. The first tests I did were inspired by the A24 ident - my favourite. I wasn't sure what I was doing it for so I just used the word 'Juno'.
I had to create the letters as separate layers in Illustrator, then import them and craft their paths from one position to another. This individual comp was then imported into the following RGB comp where I set the individual channels, adjusted the size of each comp by 0.5 (as well as keyframe their length) and delayed each one by 1 frame to have the following effects.
So here's how that ended up looking:
And that's where the struggle started because I couldn't think of a way to get this to work with a credits sequence. I've always been a fan of simple, minimalist credits... so I sort of just went with what I personally wanted to do & knew would make nice opening credits.
I went through a bunch of films, looked at the atmosphere they established and ended up settling on Lady Bird. What followed was an hour of cutting out vintage lady birds from old postcards and books in Photoshop.
And then a lot of text alignment, optics, some blur, some noise, a bit of masking for an effect of glow with the use of decreasing exposure. At one point I used Motion Tile to add Wiggle effect to the text, and then ended up doing that to everyone single one of the lady birds as well. They all got keyframed to crawl across the screen.
So here's all that:
And then eventually, when everything seemed good to go, I decided to cut the credits with some scenes from Lady Bird ft. a lovely song by Junodream that I felt captured the feeling of the film really well.
I realised today that it was exactly a month ago, on February 7th, that Chloe & I met up for a coffee and she told me about her idea and I got so excited I pretty much jumped at the opportunity of being the producer (and I'm really! not! that! good! at! producing!).
We've been so incredibly busy developing and perfecting the idea that I haven't had any time to sit back and write a post, so this might be more of an overlook than a detailed look into every aspect of the development. As soon as Chloe told me her idea of 'almost touches', I thought of this beautiful music video and then & there decided I wanted to be a part of it because I straight-up felt really passionately about the theme & thoughts behind the project. I listened to Andrea Gibson speak the 'Orlando' poem and I think it was such a strong starting point for a film.
Dancers:
We had a few little meet-ups before study week but I wouldn't say we really started working on it until Chloe wrote up the first Synopsis & Treatment. From that, I submitted multiple ads for female dancers on various platforms that Rachel had suggested. Arts Jobs was possibly the easiest one and we heard back within a week, although the dancer was from Kent & after calculating the travel expenses we realised we couldn't afford it. I had a lot of difficulty posting on LondonDance as they wouldn't let you manually submit an ad - instead you have to email the editor. However, I never heard back (not once, from my four emails!), so I'm not sure what happened.
We got a bit desperate at this point so I put out an ad on Farnham Freshers and a lovely person forwarded it to someone they knew at London Contemporary Dance School. I also posted it on the University of Surrey page (as they have a specific Theatre & Dance section) but had no response. I made a little poster and forwarded it to Nina (as she said she had dancer contacts), Victor (because he's lovely and offered to help) and people Rachel's friend Jo suggested. Victor actually managed to find someone, just as we heard back from one of the people Jo suggested. As this is an LGBTQ+ dance film, Chloe felt very passionately about getting actual gay dancers to perform so even though we still haven't made a decision, it's likely we might go for a dancer named Rachel & a partner of her choice as they would both have a similar dance style and both be part of the LGBTQ+ community. I'm currently waiting for more details from Rachel, but prior to this I made an online poll just to get expense details whilst also giving any possible applicants a choice to tell us their sexuality if they felt comfortable (as from the start we wanted a mostly LGBT crew).
Crew & Production:
I don't quite know how it happened but we managed to recruit students from all three years of our course! Anne suggested Chloe ask two first years and they both agreed to help out in 2nd Camera Assistant/Continuity and Production Assistant roles. I asked Emily, Jack, Grace and Alice for help with Camera, Sound and Light and they were all happy to assist, and later on Alex got on board as Gaffer assistant. So that's a crew of nine people which Chloe & I are so excited about!
At the same time I've been trying my best to keep up with everyone's details and fill out our production pack. We've got two Risk Assessments, one for two days of B32 and one for a day at the weekend shooting bedroom shots within a house (with less crew than studio!). Actually, we might need to update the Risk Assessment as after our induction with David today he suggested we book an EasyRig and use mirrors for our 'flashing lights' so now there's extra cautions we might need to take if we end up using this equipment.
Overall I did most of the paperwork but Chloe added a detailed camera shot-list to the Call Sheet and a rough moodboard + storyboard which came in handy when talking to David. I think we've also realised that a lot of the time on the first day needs to be spent figuring out the final choreography because we need to see what the dancers bring to the shoot.
Oh look, everything's so tidy!
Funding:
This has been a journey. I thought second year would be a good time to see how fundraising works + we wanted to make this dance film as good as possible. So we've done so much!
We made a video & published an Indiegogo page. This was a massive step outside of our comfort zone. We had to write up an actual script and somehow looking at camera is a VERY stressful experience.
(Thanks to those who actually donated, it made our days! There's still five days left as of today.)
I made endless illustrations & animations. I included two in the Indiegogo video, but here's the still illustrations I made on Adobe.
Oh, and then I thought it was a good idea to get people's attention by making a little moving image piece which was INSANE, I spent half a day staring at my screen trying to doodle an actually good image (which is so hard without a tablet), only to have to paint it in, save it, redraw it, repaint it, save it, redraw it, repaint it and save it, put it together and export it as a shot video. Yes, it only had three frames but honestly I overestimated how long it would take me before my eyes started drying up.
And then we're baking this Sunday and doing a bake sale on Monday to hopefully raise some more money (we really want to be able to pay the dancers as they're most likely going to come from London & spend two long days in the studio).
I think that's probably it so far, but I have most definitely forgotten to mention something.
I'm super excited for the actual shoot because hearing Chloe talk about her vision has been really wonderful and I hope that with the crew & some funds available she can make it as amazing as she wants to. I hope I can take part in the actual shoot too, as now that Pre-Production is almost done & we have a Production Assistant, I'd like to explore some of the camera skills I've been too busy to focus on this year. (and maybe I can even catch up with some Fields & Frames work in April... hopefully...)
And to finish off, here's a collection of really interesting dance videos I watched whilst in pre-production:
