Holly Probert DFSA Productions

DISSERTATION PROPOSAL: a while ago we had some lectures with photography's Matt Lindsey where in one lecture he discussed Barthes, and his point on photography creating a counter memory. i found this really interesting and so i looked into it a little more, as it was one of the questions we could choose for our last essay, i chose to take on a different question as i couldnt formulate my argument surrounding this question. but ive always remembered this lecture as it really interested me. and so i would love to focus on this question of 'does photography create a counter memory?' for my dissertation. im in two minds about this as one half suggests that photography gives a snapshot of reality, and there for isnt a counter memory, its rather an element of reality. however the other half of this suggests that in most photographs we take in modern day socioty, we pose and therefore emulate an unreal and unnatural version of reality, which, upon later review, creates a co...

CHARACTERISATION AND DANCE STYLE: in a previous post (ethics) I posted my brief for the piece where I gave examples of possible dance styles I would like for each age. however, whats more important is the personality that's brought into it. for the choereography I have an external choreographer who will be stepping in to help me put together the routines, with that in mind I would be focusing on it more from a characteristics point. to do this I have created collages for each age group. these are focusing on a bit of personality but mostly costume and make up. this one is focusing around 5 year old age group. some of these are pictures of me and my school when I was 5/6. others are examples of what I would've been wearing in 2003 when I was 5 years old. it shows that I was sweet, quirky, funny, I loved dressing up, Tinkerbelle was my favourite, and the way my parents would have dressed me. this is surrounding 10 year old me, some of these again, are me from 2008/2009...

BRIEF: this is the brief I have given my dancers for the auditions (13/03/18 - 5pm) UPDATE CALL FOR DANCERS - student dance film - Looking for dancers for student dance film at UCA farnham. ... The film is focused around a therapy I did at 17 called EMDR, in regards to a disjointed backlog of my life. With this in mind I have chosen 5 ages with a brief description of the kind of intent/personality I would like brought into it. (None of these will be played by people of that age. So it’s about getting into a mind set) Age 5 - bubbly, care free, happy, upbeat, fun. (Open to dance styles, possible ballet?) Age 10 - loads of energy, musical theatre, freestyle, fun. (Performance based dance styles eg: musical theatre, freestyle, possible contemporary/modern, etc) Age 13/14: teenage angst, emo, angry, confused, releasing anger and built up frustration (dance styles: breakdance, street, urban, etc) Age 16/17: investigation about yourself, learning what your body is and who you...

LEARNING AGREEMENT: I finished my learning agreement! I am so relieved. I feel really motivated like I might actually be able to do this. I had a one to one with rosie which massively inspired me. we talked through my idea and she seemed to like it, we looked into ethics of working with underaged subjects, and what regulations there would be. but here is my agreement: Digital Film & Screen Arts Learning Agreement YEAR: 2 NAME:   holly probert DATE: 06/03/18 Unit Name/No: Dance film Deadline for submission: 08/03/18 GROUP PRODUCTION: NO INDIVIDUAL PRODUCTION: YES DESCRIPTION: A synopsis of the work you intend to undertake in fulfilment of the aims, outcomes and assessment criteria of the unit giving fuller detail in response to each of the five sections below. I intend to create a dance film surrou...

TODAYS WORKSHOP: today Beytan took us into G32 and taught us how to print properly. honestly they workshop was amazing, but really exhausting. I couldn't think afterwards as he works us really hard but we needed it and I enjoyed it. I took some images and videos of what we did because I know I'm going to forget otherwise. he taught us about different papers and how the papers effected the printer settings he said DO NOT use over 300g weighted paper as it will probably get jammed in the printer. hes taught us about matt, gloss and satin papers, and showed us 3 books full of examples of paper types we could use as well as discussing where we could get them prom and cost. we discussed our task criteria and made sure we all knew what to do. he also told us that rosie had booked out some days in the photography printing room (G32) for us specifically. there are 40 minute slots we can book in order to print our images with the print credit he had given us. he also spoke abo...

LIGHTING PLANS: I began to start thinking about what kind of lighting I would need for each of my routines and dance sections. so I made some plans to start thinking about that now I have a location in mine. I will be filming at my house, in my living room. my reasoning for this is because the film is about my growing up, it felt appropriate to film in the space where it all happened as I have access to it. I have lived in my current home since I was 1 year old, and so all of these stages that I will explore in my film were lived in this environment. so after getting location permissions (bargaining with my mum), I have arranged to film on the 14th and 15th of april 2018. anyway, here are my lighting plans:   General 1-5 (first draft): Why this wont work: the camera being placed from the same direction as the smaller light means that the light could get in the way of what I want to do, if I love in front of it I would cast a shadow. No back light – making it look fla...

RISK ASSESSMENT: so the other day I completed my risk assessment in the hopes of getting signed off just after auditions. this is my second completed piece of preproduction (my first being my learning agreement)

Studio: today Beytan took us into G28, the main photography studio. he spoke to us about two artists, Karivagio and Rembrant. two triditional fine art painters who developed different styles of lighting in their paintings almost becoming pioneers for their talents. Beytan then started to teach us what we would need to know for assessment. the reason why we were in the photography studio talking about paintings was because it is possible to create the same lighting for photography. he introduced us to wide and narrow lighting, saying how they are good foundations to begin portrait photography. wide lighting is where, in the camera's view, the light is illuminating the visually widest part of the face. and narrow is the opposite, where the light is illuminating the visually smaller half of the face. he used alice to demonstrate his point, and managed to take some beautiful photographs of her by having created different lighting. he then went on to discuss the different ways to ...

LIGHTROOM: today Beytan taught us how to use light room to organise our photographs, sync them, add and remove the to collections and how to edit in light room. we got some stock images from online in RAW format, and played around with them to learn what the software can do and how to use it correctly. this was really helpful and really interesting. i found it A bit daunting and i doubt i will remember it all, but heres hoping i will. he also discussed with us today about our assignments and how they would need to be handed in and marked, it turns out everything in each workshop that we are taught is a task we will need to hand in on the 23rd. that is a bit frustrating as i was ill and missed the first lesson with him. after speaking to some of my peers hopefully ill be able to figure it out. i mean theres always youtube if not.

SKELETON: today in VFX Phil taught us how to build a skeleton on after effects, parent each limb, then use Dirv to program it and then we are able to move it. its really awesome. most of mine worked however the head didnt work and the right leg looked broken, then the sofeware crashed on the computer, when i have some free time i would love to re explore this task. because mine wasnt totally perfect phil suggested i take the time to back through and try it multiple times to see if i could do it, cant wait to do that, bring on easter break!

MOVING WORDS: so today in VFX with Phil, we were taught how to create a 3D object, a camera, and a light so that we could rotate the object and see it a different way. it was really awesome to learn this, although a bit confusing. he spoke to us a bit about our projects as well, but unfortunately due to car trouble, i was really late. he told me to catch up using lynda.com and using youtube tutorials.

My Idea: I intend to create a dance film surrounding my personal experience of the work of, talking therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). I had a broken up timeline of my own life which I couldn’t join. I went to this therapy as i needed help to deal with issues i had growing up, these issues, as i hadnt dealt with them, ended up cutting themselves apart, and so looking back on my life i didnt see one string of life evening, i saw broken up fragments as individual versions of myself at different ages. this therapy takes you back to your worst moment at whatever age your breakage is, your therapist will ask you to take yourself back to that point, get you all worked up and you literally feel everything you wouldve back then. after this she asks you to look at the tips of her fingers as she moves her hand side to side, after a while she will stop and you both take a deep breath, this continues until some how your brain has been able to desensit...

ARTIST RESEARCH: after all of the various note taking and brain storming, i moved on to trying to find inspiration from other practitioners. i found some fantastic films. So for this project I have researched a number of dance films.  The first I found was called ‘Left alone’, uploaded under the username ArinaMegan, this was a DFSA film back from 2014 for the dance project, I love the effects used in the video, and the occasional blur of the moving dancers creates an almost imaginary effect. almost making the view question the reality of that person. i really like the effects used on this, however i dont like how clear it is that its being filmed in the studio, i dont understand how that fits into the context and i feel like it wouldve been better suited if the set was more dressed.  From here I began to look into various styles of dance to try and grasp an idea of what I’d like. Found other contemporary dance film such as ‘Aura’, by Deftone Digital Product...