It's been quite a while since I added anything into the blog, as I've been so busy website maintenance was the last thing on my list.
After all the issues with dying my fabric, I was able to get on with the costumes. I found an 'in washing machine' dye, which meant I was able to avoid the dyes dripping onto the floor again when I began my ant costume. After every costume was made, we worked very quickly in order to get all the material -ie photos and filming- I would need for the next couple of months. Thank you very much Vienna Ausobsky and Joe Ross, for working the cameras while I was costumed.
After filming was done, I moved onto recording, which did not go as smoothly. I was bought this wonderful recording microphone for Christmas, and yet I was very confused and a bit disappointed when the quality of the recordings turned out to be... not great. It was only after everything was finished and my voices had gone home that I realised the programme I was using was not on the setting for external microphones- we had done the whole thing through the microphone of the laptop! I know what you're thinking- "why not just rerecord everything now you know what the problem is? That is because after the recordings were done, lip syncing was filmed in order to accompany those particular recordings. And I know, once you're more familiar with a script, that you are able to put your own spin on it, and more emphasis on some words rather than others. which probably means the timing of the lipsyncing would be off, as well as the body language not matching the way the sentence is said. It would also be particularly difficult for the any characters, as I redyed the brown ant costume to create the black ant in order to save time (baring in mind all this recording, filming, dying and photography had to take place in the space of a week), which means the brown ant costume no longer exists.
This week I have been working on three film pieces. The first one was just 'card bits', where I shuffle, order, and stack the cards that I made myself. this was difficult due to the size, but the difficulty adds to the film. Secondly, I made 'Playing Games', where multiple games of solitaire were combined together, in an attempt at making it look as if the cards change places during a game. However, I completely forgot about camera angles, which kind of ruins the illusion, but oh well, it's only part of the development. Lesson learnt. Both of these films have a soundtrack of tweeting birds, to reference the nature aspect that I have been including in the rest of the project.
I am now moving onto the bigger film, where the costume characters are involved in a card game together, based on the original go fish. By naming the cards after the news events that were on the front- BLM protests, Canada, Cycle protests in slovenia etc.- the audience begin to make connections between the items on the cards. There is also dialogue included, which demonstrates which news event the insects represent. For example, The lady bird complains about losing territory, as he represents the feud between China and India over the Himalayas. The Bee talks about dealing pollen, and their secret language being infiltrated, to represent the drugs bust in June. And the ants begin an argument, to represent the BLM protests, showing those who supported the protests and those who didn't.
Don't forget about the new feature coming soon!
