Editing and Narrative - Michael's tutorial

An exercising python, pil and ffmpeg to sort images by brightness ((make grayscale, convert to 1x1px image, value the grayscaleness of this pixel)). In this way, by altering the rhythm and even the connotation of the original movie - a new composition of body movement is created.

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Further references: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_nude_motion_study_by_Eadweard_Muybridge_(2).jpg

Brightness: the luminance of a body that an observer uses to determine the comparative luminance of another body. (from www.thefreedictionary.com/brightness)

Brightness as the structural element of the new composition. Brightness as the common unit, linking the physical and digital performance. Transporting the visual effects of the illumination on the object and the object within a scene, towards the screen color values.

The original video:

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The re-arrangement of the image sequence, by brightness, consequently creates a new movement sequence:

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In choreography's tradition, the traces of a performance, have fed the imagination, and given rise to new versions of future performances.

"Choreography's manifold incarnations are a perfect ecology of idea-logics; they do not insist on a single path to form-of-thought and persist in the hope of being without enduring." by William Forsythe

further references: http://sarma.be/oralsite/pages/William_Forsythe_on_Scores/ http://www.ubu.com/film/forsythe_solo.html

My experience continued by re-thinking the video screen as a stage, a frame for the performance to happen. A more abstract experiment, focusing on the visual space perception. A technique very much used in observational drawings within anatomy studies. This time, the performance settings focused on the positive and negative spaces created by the moving body in contrast with the backgrounds:

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further references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts) & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)

+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase#/media/File:Rubin2.jpg

Dance with Camera includes works in which dance is a subject, or mode, used to explore broader themes of collaboration, narrative, structure, metaphor and abstraction. These works propose choreography for the camera lens: movement is designed for the area prescribed by the camera's frame; the ephemerality of live performance is fixed in time. The camera also allows close-ups that bring us in proximity to the dance, or in some cases, performs as a partner in unusual pas de deux. Photographic series freeze time while also expanding the notion of dance as a time-based medium. Editing techniques compress time and space, conjure dances impossible in real time, and even transform relatively static performers into dancers. Finally, the camera is not merely a recording device, but stage and audience simultaneously.

-- Jenelle Porter, Curator

www.ubu.com/film/dance-with-camera.html

A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) - 2:13, b&w, silent

For this groundbreaking avant-garde film, Deren filmed dancer Talley Beatty as he performed a highly condensed dance sequence in a variety of settings, from a forest locale, to a sitting room, and finally to a sculpture-filled courtyard. Deren directed the camera as if it were a dancer, expertly using cuts, varying film speeds, and backwards motion to create a dance that could only exist on film. As Deren wrote in 1965, the dance is "so related to camera and cutting that it cannot be 'performed' as a unit anywhere but in this particular film." This work is considered one of the first major filmdances, and has influenced generations of artists and filmmakers since. http://www.ubu.com/dance/deren_study-in-choreography.html

Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (1966)

This prize-winning film captures dancer Bettie de Jong, a longtime member of the Paul Taylor Company, as she performs a single dance theme numerous times. Harris shot de Jong from a variety of different camera angles during twenty-five filming sessions over the course of a year, and then edited the sequences together as a montage, resulting in nine different variations on an identical series of movements. Like Maya Deren's 1945 dance film A Study in Choreography for Camera, Harris' film explores the possibilities opened up by dance on camera. http://www.ubu.com/film/harris_9-variations.html