Beginning with our MIND MAP - we decided to make a children’s book as a short film - big kids

Our time as a team together live was very restricted. After all our zoom meetings and brain-storming the children’s book idea was the one we decided to go for and so on the first day we had the wish to try working towards having a split screen and creating “diverse” bodies from the different upper and lower bodies, like  a “body patchwork”. We took very colorful and placative costumes out of our wardrobe and looked at what we had already decided to work with.

• The seven elements 

• The colorful costumes

• A metronome set at 58 bpm

• Our sound board with contact microphones and our collections of objects.

• A white space.

Following the idea of splitting the screen horizontally (at the dancers waist) we then took our        seven basic score movements (click here) and transformed them giving ourselves the rule of keeping the hands above the waist and also using the legs but trying NOT to move our waists. After the research and trying different examples we practiced and made some test film recordings.

Manuel also tested editing with a split screen and spilt bodies. It was fascinating but extremely difficult to be as exact as we would need to be and also for the dancers to perform the movement with liveliness. Maybe an idea for the future but for now we decide against the brutality of tearing bodies apart. We continued with more filming, thinking ahead of what possibly could be useful for editing and having enough footage to choose from and be creative with. This included facial expressions and gestures. We had to measure all distances out and the dancers had to stay within certain marks so that the editing would work.  The metronome was ticking away...

SOUND

Our sound track was the next thing we worked on. The dancers actually made a pre research and we jammed with our instruments and found sounds to fit with the different moves and characters. To make a professional track for the film we created our own recording studio. Olaf Pyras and Deborah played the sound board as Henrik captured all recordings. Different sounds and rhythms based on our 58 bpm speed were played and recorded. With these recordings, some really cool sound passages were created and there was also the possibility to layer them even more whilst editing the film.

TEXT

Florian had been to the library and borrowed a collection of childrens books. Anything he found along the lines of diversity, otherness, physicality and even democracy and conflict solving. It is not our wish to make a political statement and so his task was to let sentences speak to him in a playful way without necessarily needing to make sense. The collection of sentences were sorted and reduced and studio sessions with Pablo were held to record the sentences as if reading a children’s book. 

EDITING

So finally we had all puzzle pieces and Manuel began to edit. Between Manuel, Olaf and myself (Deborah) as director, alot of Ping Pong… the sound being inspired by the visual, the choice of text, influencing the editing, the visual again inspiring the sound. Zooming in-between and finally we got there.