Bright Top Piece Process

 The Bright Top piece was one of the first creative idea's we decided to pursue together within collaboration, our main inspirations came from And So Say All of Us 

Video Link - And So Say All of Us (52 choreographers, 1 dance) - YouTube 

and Exquisite Corps  Video Link -Exquisite Corps (42 choreographers, 1 dance) - YouTube

From watching these two video's we all loved the idea of everyone's last move being someone's else's beginning . It was a new way of working that we were all eager to try out.

From there on we set to come up with some rules of music timings etc. Our first initial music idea was put forward by Becky , so we decided to use the music by Hozier 'movement' , which we felt really in captured the essence of the final film that we wanted to create.

Myself (Laura Nuttall) thought it would be really exciting to try and edit a piece like this together , So i set out to be the editor of this piece.

Once this was all decided we all had time to create movements to our timings of the movement , which ever dancer would then send to myself to edit together . we had a se order everyone's phrase would go in . That never changed through this choreographic process .

Bella, Ava, Sarah, Becky , Laura, Daisy, Macy, Megan , Tyler, Mollie, Olivia and Amber .

Her is a clip of some of the first drafts of myself getting used to the movement and space I chose for my sections - https://youtu.be/Mqc-Ugs5zyw

For the first draft of putting all the clips together there wasn't much directions taken place in terms of how the movement should be filmed either landscape or portrait , the costume , whether someone would be filming or not . It was more about getting the clips together just to see how the clips would flow into each other. From the first rough cut we could see that with some corrections and more direction this could be created into a great little piece of work. 

My thought when editing the first clip is I was surprised how well everything flowed into each other as I feel we all really tried to make a direct correlation to the music and our movement . As a whole I really enjoyed editing it all together . However there was main set back when editing the first draft and it was a technical one involving music working on the clips . No matter how hard I tried the music wouldn't play which was a great shame , as I believed the music to really help rive this piece . So The next video clip link you can see will be the second draft attempt .

Second Draft Attempt - https://youtu.be/Nld9NqiCwNc

In this clip we all tried to work on the positioning of our cameras and our stances especially in the beginning and ending to help make each transition smoother as if one person was melting into another , special wise. When I got these next set of clips in , it was clear and evident that the way the filming was done made the transitions glide much  more seamlessly . During this time we were also trying to film music that would work with the video . We also established as a collective that we wanted the clips to be filmed in landscape therefore the overall finish of the film would be better, and took more time with our sets. Even thought many factors were being et in stone there was still many decision we were taking as a group in terms of costume.

After a couple of more weeks we decided to go with a bright top theme and black leggings , something that would make each dancer stand out a little bit more in their everyday surroundings. As I started getting the final finished clips in I was instantly seen the amount of progress everyone had made from our first cut video to our final one the timings and movement were sharper and clean, everyone's bright colours worked so well as our costume and I finally managed to get a piece of music that didn't have any technical issue with it and fit with out movement material also . 

our final music choice was Hozier 'Take me to church'

link to our final bright top piece- https://youtu.be/pt9uy4ZdOxc

Film editor  - Laura Nuttall

music sources - Laura Nuttall (final piece) Becky McFarlane (initial piece)

Dancers and Choreographers  - Bella , Ava , Sarah, Becky, Laura, Daisy, Macy, Megan ,Tyler, Mollie, Olivia , Amber

My point of view of the editor throughout this whole process . From the beginning I was super excited to try and edit this piece together and work with transitions music and movement all together and see what could come from it. All the clips I receive and put together were great and the process of making draft after draft after draft and trial and error was so important in the production of this clip. There was some point were I would try and get a certain point perfect as best as I can either trim or transitioned into another which I would spend quite  a bit of time on. But apart from that there was no real negative connotations of being the editor within this project. The music struggles weren't helpful and was quite disheartening at times because you wouldn't want to edit all thee clips together of everyone's hard work for the music to not serve the movement any justice . but in the end was challenging and rewarding and I would love to work on more projects lie this again in the future.