Fight poses for storyboarding

Some drawings from our reference footage of Courtney and Dimitra at the Space to help with storyboarding

Nina: Face Ideas and Development

Ok, we've been dancing around the idea of not really having a specific character design- having something much more expressive and "every man-ish" instead, but I think even if we do end up with that sort of look to our film our character still needs to stay consistent and so we need to at least start with a solid design. I started by drawing some angular faces i liked particular features of, then i highlighted those features and tried to bring them together into something resembling the character description given by Joanna. My style still leans heavily towards "Disney" but i tried my best to make her less beautiful as i developed her. I tried to match the angular and exaggerated style of my body designs obviously. Still very open to change at this stage.

Nina possible hair colours maybe

Just playing around with hair colours on a face idea. Doesn't have to be like this specific design but its been helping me to visualise an idea with hair.

Character (body) designs: Nina

Sifting through our footage

We began to look through our edited footage together and pick out particular poses we liked. These are both gentle and forceful "reacting" poses. These drawings were made from stills of day2, version 1, and day 2, version 3.

Dancing scribbles from 02/02/12

drawings i did during our second session with the dancers; Courtney and Dimitra. I've simply neglected to scan them in for far too long.

A concept man

A quick doodle of a male dancer, scratched oil pastel.

Character Log - draft:

Name: Nina

Sex: Female

Age: 30/35 ?

What she feels:

• pain
• lost

Personality:

• calm and cool
• she is lonely, depressed, vulnerable but brave at the same time

Character goals:

• Nina had probably plans and dreams but all of that collapsed. We don't know if she is actually giving up or making a critical, brave choice of committing suicide.
• Nina is a type of Everyman character, the character of her is less specific more symbolic.
• The one think that we know for sure about her is that she feels the pain.
• She can dance – she has a body of a dancer

What we know from the poem:

• from the poem we know that she has stunning appearance (“ he men of clouded muscle look at her and clench fists their faces like the negative of the sun about to burst in light to gleam”)
• femininity is one of her attributes (“tall in the high heels”)
• erotic (“breasts/each one alone”)
• beautiful
• sexually frustrated/deprived, longing for human touch ( “the hips/swaying sleepily/ the hips/ rising forever/ and forever”)
• Can we assume that Poswiatowska is Nina? (“a carved-in triangle of heart” - suggests the heart disease)
• she wears a high heels and a dress

Dancing Nina Synopsis:

Nina sits alone in vast, empty, cold room. She waits. She waits for her lover to come. She is left alone, lethargic and lost in pain. She goes to an attic and starts dancing. During the dance, a vision of her lover/lovers comes. The dance - lyrical in the begging - becomes dramatic and full of passion. It is lovers reunion. But what we see as dance is an illusion, it is an act of committing suicide. Nina hangs herself in the attic, amongst wet sheets, on the ordinary clothes line. She dies alone.

Reference material. The Space. 2/02/2012 Dance. Handheld shots

Second day of filming. Session was led by myself and Slava. We worked on interpretation of the poem and  possible story interpretation.

First task: We asked dancers to perform with poem recording. During the introduction we highlighted important moments of the poem, movement description and general feel.  Also dancers had a chance to read the poem and listen to both language versions:

 Here you can find poem interpretation to the music:

 Then we asked them to repeat some elements from the day before:

We also worked on possible 3 takes on the script.

•  Version 1 dance/death is light, lyrical, it is rather positive experience, gives us strong sense of freedom. 
• Version 2  dance/death is a struggle, conflict, the male character/death brings the tension
• Version 3 Mix of both (possible use of flashbacks in this version)

Dancers performed all of the above. First version performed with music (Lots of beautiful examples of lifting) :

Version 2:

Version 3

We have also asked to help us with climax moment and idea of a step, when Nina falls but there is noone to catch her:

 




 

Meanwhile, in my sketchbook...

A crazy collage/ charcoal and ink thing i did very late at night based on our gustav klimt ideas.

Character and pose development

Started on painting over my original life drawings from our 2 days at the Space in photoshop. I was freestyling it and then it became a constructive attempt to test lighting/ pallete/and character designs. obviously our dancers weren't emaciated or naked... or male, so basically i only used their rough poses and proportions recorded on the day and made up the rest according to the ideas we already discussed; i.e muscular/angular male and anorexic/ fragile female.

Reference material. The Space. 1/02/2012 Tricia Anderson explains. Handheld shots

Here you can find material recorded at The Space on Wednesday 1 February 2012. To make it more accessible I have divided it into sections.  First to go are the shots from small Panasconic SD90, hand held. Tricia Anderson leads the dancers and describes the movements, action and emotional state of Nina.

Reaching, Going Forward, Spiral Going Down:

 

Blocking:

Blocking and Passing:

Touch becomes a wound. Blocking:

Holding. Letting go. Breathing:

Game between two: protecting and hurting. Hanging on but giving up at the same time. Remembering moments:

Helping/cradling Confidence Attack:

Reference material. The Space. 1/02/2012 Dance Handheld shots

Below you can find material recorded  at The Space on Wednesday 1 February 2012.
Dance sequences. Dancers: Miranda Sheehy, Courtney Robertson, Alicja Brzezicka, Dimitra Daskalaki

Warm up:

Reaching, Going Forward, Spiral Going Dow:

 

 

Blocking:

 

Blocking and Passing:

 

Blocking. Touch. Wound:

Holding. Letting go. Breathing:

 

 

Game between two: protecting and hurting:

Game between two: protecting and hurting. Hanging on but giving up at the same time. Remembering moments. Individual dance:

Helping/cradling Confidence Attack:

Cradling, Attacking:

Cradling, Attacking, Throwing out of balance:

Audio Recordings from The Space Wednesday 01/02/2012

The recordings from Wednesday when we went to The Space.

First bit of recording for Dancing Nina research.

00.00- Session begins, Joanna, Slava and dancers talking
02.07- Dancing, soft breath Heavy steps
03.45- Heavier breaths
04.59- Feet squeeking
05.28- Heavy breathe out and foot work
06.07- Talking
08.59- Foot work and breathing
11.24- Talking

More Dancing Nina research

00.00- Tricia Talking
02.49- Music with movements
03.02- Tricia talking to dancers
05.36- Breathing, dance, falling, footwork (when she was scrabbling away from tricia on the floor.)
06.38- Dancing noises and music
07.32- Tricia and dancing noises
09.55- Music and dancing noises (emotional)

00.00- Dancer talking about process with Tricia
- Tricia talking
05.11- Dance moves to music
05.35- Emotional dancing (gasping and struggle)
06.23- Tricia talking (leaning)
08.58- Emotional dancing
14.37- Dancer tallking about role reversal
- Tricia
17.17- Dance with emotional memory
- Tricia
- End

Dancing scribbles

On-the-spot life drawing of Miranda, Courtney, Dimitra, Alicja and Tricia at The Space yesterday, improvising. E.g. rising, falling, spiralling, blocking, and puppeting each other.

Concept Scribbles

A couple of quick drawings i made when Jo first showed me some photos we were going to use for inspiration.

Production meeting minutes 31 January 2012

Ideas discussed in the meeting:
 

• use of flashbacks (Nuria) examples 'beautiful' '21 grams'  
• what we see in the attic? is there anything that resembles the male character? Belongings, maybe his clothes. Look at scene from "the Artist": a hand appearing in a suit sleeve, maybe she could wrap herself in the sheets/cloths hanging in the attic 
• 'Tale of Three Brothers'

Script:

• how to describe a dance or a fight in the script, possibly use a phrase "dance scene in which...after certain amount of time ...." etc 
• use of shot description in the script yes, it is allowed, especially if you have something particular in mind, Wayne has 80% stuff pre visualised before writing a script 
• 3 possible scripts:  

• Freedom - dance/dying is a spiritual escape, Nina leaves physical body behind her. It is rather positive experience, gives us strong sense of freedom. look at different cultures and their attitude towards death 
• Fight - struggle, conflict, the male character/death brings the tension 
• Both (possible use of flashbacks in this version) 

 

Music: 

• tango seems to be too structured, do we want to leave more space for interpretation? 
• something slightly more abstract with 'moments that suggest' 
• instruments like: piano, violin, viola, cello, accordion 
• what about flamenco. maybe modern flamenco (Nuria: Bebo Valdes) 
• look at fado 
• look at Antonio Forcione - possibility 
• Tricia brought Miguel Poveda record (track 5 and 12) 
• use of specific/assigned instrument when character appears, different instrument - different personality,  look at 'Peter and the Wolf' 
• prepare rough animatic and then pass it on to the composer 

To do: 

• Jo write 3 versions of the script  
• organise a small production meeting,  team discuss the scripts, decide 
• 1st and 2nd February filming at the Space - generating reference material/ working on choreography 
• write down what we need from the dancers 
• book equipment (tripod, Sony z7e + something small for hand-held shots, sound recorder, go and ask technicians about mics) 
• record sound/film 
• organise transport 
• prepare release forms 
• Nuria bring/visualize the flashback idea

Things done for meeting: 

• The Space arrangements (Slava)
• further research

Production meeting minutes 24 January 2012

During last term I was responsible for production management of The Date Night - short animated film. I used to write down and post the production meeting minutes quite regularly. It helped me a lot with organising things and making sure that all members of the team can track ideas floating around and the decision-making process. Since English is not my first language I tend to write minutes in the form of catchwords and bullet-points. I have a huge request: if something is not clear enough, please let me know....

Below you can find minutes from 24 January, our first production meeting:

Slava's ideas:

- use/experiment with screen print to develop the textures

- use of a chair in choreography, Nina stands on a chair, makes a step but there is noone to catch her

-sense of security in choreography

Ideas discussed in the meeting:

- no music in the beginning

- use of tango

- mixing the music: strong and delicate

- poem pace, use of voice over and sounds like heart beat, incidental music

- use of blue as a colour of grief/sadness - (Picasso)

- Nina behaviour before the dance : she is focused, methodical, tidies everything up, puts shoes together etc

 ("The Odd Couple" - Wayne's association)

- what makes her dance, maybe they are in conflict

- the act of falling - revealing shot

- use of Poswiatowska biography as an example for a Nina's back story

To do:

- back story

- script

- concepts

Research to do:

- look at animation with use of 'multiply frames' /delay  effect (e.g. Piotr Dumala)

Things done for the meeting:

- blog

- production schedule

- synopsis

- basic character log

- emails (Finn, Tricia, dancers from the Space)

- poem recording