First video foray

1992, and Donna Wijngaart and I decided to make our first dance video. Of course neither of us knew much about making a video, but that would never stop us. I was studying dance on film and Donna was studying sculpture/performance. Anyway, we decided to collaborate. This work was to become the practical exploration for a paper I was writing where I proposed that to effectively make dance films, the choreographer had to understand and make major directorial and design decisions. If not, the work likely lacked coherence in its resolution of dance, design and film media.

I am really proud of this work. Donna did enter it in one of the Metro award seasons and won. But beyond that it wasn’t half bad for our first attempt, and spurred us both on to make other films.

We had plenty of other people contributing – Chris, Lara, Tasha and Danielle were all there and never forgetting Daniel La Forest who did the edit for us in my loungeroom, overnight, so that we could meet our respective assignment deadlines. Daniel also then set us up with our own analogue video editing equipment which provided many hours of fun, frustration and exhaustion.

We learnt a lot about what not to do in using effects on film, but it was pre-digital, so it was timely.

Entry into ‘Poser’

Scarab in Poser

My first foray into using Poser, which is an application with 3D models and character creation tools to create and render 3D graphics and animations. The manual is 800+ pages so I am ignoring that and jumping in to play. Luckily there is a scarab beetle in the library so I will use this library model to explore how to change materials, lighting, camera angles and to key frame to create movement. Some of the language of the app is familiar to other programs I have used (Danceforms, and a brief brush with 3D Studio Max).

There is significant complexity/capacity in the editing tools that deal with colour, texture and lighting. You can import textures and/or manipulate diffuse colour, highlights, ambient light and reflection. And you have to choose from individual body parts when making these manipulations.

So, without knowing what I was doing I have changed colours, textures and highlights on the library model. Next I plan to make changes because I know what I’m doing. Also want to change the shape.

No idea yet how I create my own models.

I can see that this is going to be a challenge!