Holly Probert DFSA Productions

Suzie's Dance film: Suzie's dance film was about her finding friends and finding confidence. she had a desire to film in silhouette which I have wanted to dabble in for a while. she contacted me, knowing how much I love to gaffer, sat me down and spoke to me about her idea. I really loved it and felt that I could be able to assist in bringing that to life. so I signed on as her gaffer for the shoot. I have already researched silhouette lighting so I didn't feel like I had to do that again, she spoke to me about some of her influences for the piece including 'Thought of you' by Ryan Woodward. as well as a couple of silhouette dances, all evident on her blog - suzannebellisio-dfsa.blogspot.com. when arriving on set, we had booked out the three lights, of which we only used two, as well as a gaffer kit. the gaffer kit came in really helpful as I had to remove two sets of barn doors from the lights before using them as they would've got in the way due to needi...

Conclusion: so I unfortunately can't upload the video right now as I don't have a USB port on my Mac and haven't brought the adaptor yet. But, I think there are things I could've done better, such as sound, I think I could've been more organised but overall I think I did ok on this actually, probably the project I'm second most happy with to date, besides my sound piece. shout out to my incredible crew, theres no way it would've come together without them. im insanely happy with the dancers and dance styles I ended up with, the dancers were incredible and easy to work with, made the shoot very enjoyable. I've enjoyed the experience of finding dancers and choosing a crew, I found it very rewarding to build something by myself from the ground up which I actually felt attached to and was meaningful to me, it has made me feel a bit more confident to try out new crew roles that I haven't previously and has also made me see I can direct. I'm no...

Edit: I looked through all the footage and honestly found it really difficult. I tried to edit some clips together as we tracked in different ways, some Sav decided to track her face, some her feet or torso. but it just looked uncomfortable and unnatural and just did work for me. so instead a choose one clip per dancer as when we were shooting we shot various continuous shots. when I looked at this it just felt more natural and like it was more appropriate. clearly if this were to ever be in an exhibition, I would have each video on its own screen instead of all on one but for the purposes of this presentation it makes more sense to have them laid out like this. the lighting between dancers was incredibly controlled and I have ollie and susie to thank for that because I love how the clips look together. and I love how the tracking looks, Sav really out did herself with this and did an incredible job. I couldn't have achieved such an impressive and aesthetically pleasing film th...

Sound design: I remember when I discussed my ideas with Rosie and Rachel, and they suggested I work with sound design to create a sound scape using elements of each age group to Crete one sound scape for the three videos and just allowing the audience to make connections between the two as they see fit. rather than trying to create three different sound scapes, one per video. I tried creating a sound scape however, I couldn't find something that felt right. it always felt like it didn't work, didn't match up, didn't show what I wanted it to, etc. so I ended up deciding to look at royalty free music. music has always been a huge part of my life and so I decided to use this to reflect the growth in age and how I have developed, as well as the age orders I dealt with in therapy. as I started with the youngest and worked up to now to join the dots together. I also recorded some basic sound effects like breaking plates and breathing to add under the music just to give ...

Mel: Mel has come in to rehearse on the 11/04/18. the rehearsals were easier than expected. we used routines she already knew as a base, and then began to create a mash up of these as well as some transitions between sequences. but overall went very smoothly and we produced a routine we were happy with that flowed nicely. we also started to add in some characterisation to the routine. asking her to look frustrated and act angry like a frustrated teen. after a couple of different tries she nailed it, very happy and looking forward to filming. when compiling this we decided it would work best if we performed it on set to a new song, we tried to find one with an appropriate beat, sav suggested 'Pork soda' by Post Malone which when we tried it, worked perfectly. Keira: keira came to rehearse on the 12/04/18. we did the exact same with her in regards to routine, we chose 'Run the world' by Beyonce, enabling us to have a quick and upbeat routine. when working on charact...

Final choices: People: after auditions/watching the audition tapes, i have finally decided on my contributors. for ages 10 i have chosen 11 year old Keira Ayling, trained in street and break dance with elements of tap, modern and contemporary. for age 14/15 i have chosen Mel Gilbert, age 17, trained in various styles but especially street and break dance. and finally for age 17-present i have chosen Laura Hardie, 17 years old, trained in contemporary, musical theatre and performance based movement. Location: i have decided that for both filming and rehearsing i will be at my home, (address on production pack) in farnham. my reasons for this being because my home will help portray a family environment reflecting my childhood, also it is easier than trying to book a studio. Costume: for Keira i have decided on leggings and a high neck, bright coloured top of some description, keeping her more covered and presenting a more age appropriate, child like appearance. for Mel, i have gone...

My role: On the studio shoot I took on the role of Gaffer. I worked under our cinematographer and I worked beside/within the camera team. As gaffer I worked alongside Chris in order to get to grips with the lights and he walked me through how to use the switch board and dimmer switches on the sky lights.  We didn’t have a lighting plan set in stone for the shoot. The director told me he wanted it flooded, but not too much that you couldn’t see the texture of the set. So I used two 4K lights as back lights. I used two of the sky lights to light from above, and used one huge powerful light, which I can’t currently think of the name for, to really flood out the rest of the set. As well as this we had a window on the left wall of the set. The director told me he wanted that lit, so chris and I used a huge piece of poly board, a clamp and a 1K light to achieve this. We positioned the board diagonally to the window, then we clamped the 1K light onto the top of the Left set wall and a...

STUDIO SHOOT: Today we were given the images for our studio shoots, the two that stuck out to me were "basement" which was a dimly lit sitting room featuring a man and a girl sitting/laying on the sofas. I loved fb soft lighting and the general homey atmosphere in the image. When the group and I looked at the images they all really liked another one by Diane Arbus which showed two older people one male and one female. They enjoyed the costume design. But overall we decided to follow a different image called "untitled" which showed two children playing hide and seek in what looks like a shed. The light coming from the window creates a lovely picturesque image which is very athstetically pleasing.