trailing, traipsing
My dreamy dream ideal ending for my latest dance film project is a simple stop motion series of shots. Throughout the piece, two dancers blur and roar through the woods, increasingly swamped by a hoard of paper flowers. In the final image (spoiler alert!), one of the dancers is finally still as the flowers rush over her body, burying her completely. Jon Bulette, who shot this piece beautifully with Tim Parrott, took the photos for the final stop motion footage. But today I'd like to share some of my early efforts in the dance studio with a very patient, very still Erika Hansen. Executing stop motion is new to me, but I connect to the simplicity of the form. I love the idea that you're only capturing choice moments in time. Behind the scenes, people rush around to crystalize each moment just right (in our case, it was a team of two, Tim and me, me and Tim, in a race against the sunset-ing light after a 12 hour wonder shoot). But you don't see the rushing, you just see the crystalizing.
All this stop motion chatter makes me want to try this live in performance. How would you hide the rushing? Light cues? Puppets? Set devices? A team of dancers who rush around and adjust other dancers just so? The movers and the moved? Hmm. I don't know. But I'd like to find out.
And here's the test version of my stop motion. It's a very basic beginning. A practice piece for what is to come.
And here are some of my stop motion favorites. In no way am I in the land where these categories exist, but I love them for the following reasons...
wonder. sense of real breath, space and time. a depiction of real-time decision making. it goes without saying, but I'll say it, whim plus a "y" for real. dark and magical and yet still grounded in real tasks.
"Blink" a short film by Thomas Mankovsky
holy how did they do this? pure, escapist fun. i wish i had helped to make it. makes me want to make things like it. i also think I had that dollhouse as a kid.
"End Love" music video directed by OK Go, Eric Gunther and Jeff Lieberman
kick ass fun. my kind of fabulous silliness. delightful mix of video footage and stills that blend super tech-y video editing and simple stop motion. unexpected moving parts. again, dammit, I wish I had made this, been in this or at least had the chance to watch it being made.
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