Two against Themselves

So to start off our project we wanted to focus on Liam. He is this narrative and the story so we decided to document his name his age when he started dancing. Also how he expresses himself through dancing and if he can actually do things like express himself. We needed to know what he thought about dancing in general who inspired him and what he thought about the idea of splitting dance up, having him dance in two styles too add to his skill and utilise it. The goal was to make him seem like two people using the different styles to split and in the end we ended up having a dance battle with Liam against himself moving and vibrating and body popping to the music being played. This whole sequence of events entering the mind of liam showing the difference in style but similarity in the emotion of expression and the different pace of rythem is how we came up with the synopsis.

SYNOPSIS

Entering the mind of a dancer and documenting and showing the battle a dancer has with himself. A literal battle against himself is what us as a film crew will be filming and showing. We get to this point documenting our dancer and leading the audience through the thoughts and processes of the battle. Literally taking the art form of dance and using the different genres to split our dancer show versatility. Also ultimately show that though learning is hard working through mistakes and allowing one’s self to express himself is greater and more rewarding than giving up or stopping because that in itself is easy.  

when directing the vision i had for this whole sequence of events had to be sorted out by getting Liams perspective on my musical choice first, also if he felt comfortable moving in and around the space while the music played. To settle him in i spoke to him and gave him a series of scenes for him to picture in his head that matched the theme of the song and this made it easier for him to dance.

Our camera team did a great job of finding the right angles to capture the movement and poses of both styles. Very well this made the editing easier and the transitions smoother as well as keeping the distance between the camera and dancer reasonable enough for the cuts to look great.

Our goal in post production was to fill in the gaps left by each cut when moving from style to style and taking the best moves performed and adding them together. We added a white frame to create a flash effect for some the transitions in-between songs and we also added a DJ Scratch. This is featured in dance battles and is part of the hip-hop culture it adds to the sequences and doesn't leave the audience to confused when transitioning to the next genre of music being performed. The different transitions in the sequence add to the theme of music and allow the audience to take in the battle sequences more.

We added a certain amount of color grading to manipulate the look of certain scenes and colors in the scene. We also realized that the moves Liam used matched each song very well, the masked used for each genre allowed the expression to be felt while he was dancing. His hand movements and head movements where all highlighted and stood out more, due to how much the masks related to his mood while dancing. The dark colors where for hip-hop which set the moods of aggression and bravado. While white and grey masks along with the extra cloth added to the free flo sleek mood presented by contemporary dance.

Our goal was reached, liam did what he didn't think he could do he stepped out of his shell.

Our limits as creatives was pushed and we was able to create something special. Me being passionately invested in dance all the way back to our first dance project, being allowed to direct my visio was a joy. Everyone involved with the project added to that being on the same page and being committed to the task. The only down side to everything would be having to travel from london everytime and not being able to have enough time on the over all process of creating this project. Like coming in for tutorials and spending more time in person with my team, they have done such a great job of trusting me to deliver. Our sound quallity could have been a bit better and planning on locking down locations early was also a bit of a problem. All in all special thanks to Daniel, Liam, Umor, Ethan and Kat for allowing me to direct and helping this dance project become a reality 'Two Against Themselves' has been created and my dance project was created.