Project12: The Thinker

Subject: Cris Huggins

Project12 Time: 4hrs

Project52 Time: 66hrs

For Project12 I wanted to play with the idea of ideas. How the bloom and expand and how the fad away from us all in the blink of the eye. I didn't want to get too literal with the idea of "The Thinker" but I enjoyed what Cris brought to this statue-like character. He has a great sense of what movement I like since I've been working with him for around 3 years now, so it was really easy to film him. We got all the footage we needed in 1.5hrs.

This one was similar to Project9, in that we had so much footage I had to really check each shot for only the essential and then bring that into the project. Looking retrospectively, I wish I had used a bit more light to reduce some of the noise in the picture, but oh well, no going back now! This little puppy took me about 3hrs to edit down to size. 

Cheers!

Project11: Femme Fatale

Subject: Ashley Merker

Project11 Time: 5hrs

Project52 Time: 62hrs

Project11 has a special little twist with it. I originally filmed this one back in February during a Super Bowl party at a friend's house. I found out Ashley was in town and wanted to shoot her before she left so we got together and made it work before she had to catch a bus back to PA. I just wanted to do something fun and sexy. That was really the only depth behind the video. I told her I wanted her to be a badass. And she was. I was super happy with the way this one turned out. I thought it wasn't finished when we were done shooting, which is why I never edited it, but boy was I wrong. We had enough footage for a feature length! haha We shot for around 3hrs before she had to head out.

Editing this one was really fun because we had so many hots of her getting ready. I had to choose the best angle of each action and also how I wanted to present them so that the viewer would understand what she was doing. I played a bit more with musicality in the editing of this one too which was pretty entertaining for me. It only took  me about 2hrs to finish Project11.

Enjoy!

Project10: Dryad

Subject: Hannah Seiden

Project10 Time: 3.5hrs

Project52 Time: 57hrs

So this one was shot really quickly. I was headed to a studio that I was teaching at in NJ and I brought Hannah along with me to assist. We had a rental car so we decided to take advantage of the freedom on the road and make a pit stop at Allaire State Park. We got into the woods, found a good spot, and decided to start filming right away. We only had 45 min to film so we moved on our first impulses. We stumbled upon those awesome train tracks in the woods and couldn't resist. So we decided to play a bit with those.

Going into this I didn't really know how I wanted it to play out so I'm happy it ended up how it did. Editing this was hard because I had so much footage since we shot anything and everything in our rush of a shoot and I had to spend a bunch of time just watching all the footage. Once I seeded out the bad eggs I found it easy to put together. All in all it took me about 2.5 hours to edit this one.

Let me know what you think!

Project9: Housewife

Subject: Gwen Benjamin

Project9 Time: 5.5hrs

Project52 Time: 53.5hrs

This is a fun one. I wanted to do something that wasn't so serious for a change. I had choreographed a piece to this song a while back and decided to expand on the idea in a film. It's very stepford wives-esque and I like the dark humor and sarcasm in the lyrics of the song.

I decided to film Gwen Benjamin this week and I was thrilled with the result! She was so easy to work with and comfortable on camera. And she has a sick kitchen so that helped quite a bit. Gwen's boyfriend Nathan is a New York Film Academy graduate and was also present for the shoot. He was wry much an unexpected surprise and was incredibly helpful with giving me some tips about not disorientating the viewer and angles of the body in the fame. It took me about 4 hrs to film and clean up the hue mess we made.

As I've said before, I feel that the plot driven projects are way easier for me to edit. It only took me about 1.5hrs to edit. The trickiest part was getting the las sequence where Gwen is both in the closet and resting in front of me. I used Motion to edit the rest of the shot where she is lying on the counter out and then overlayed that on the shot of me getting her out of the closet. A fun trick that I can't wait to use more of!

I was really happy with the end result! Let me know what you think!

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project8: Dust (Reprise For Woman)

Subject: Colette Nguyen

Project8 Time: 7hrs

Project52 Time: 48hrs

So I fell in love with last weeks Project but I felt like the topic of dust wasn't fully explored. I asked myself, "What was left untapped?", and I realized it was the object of femininity. I needed a woman! I felt like there was a delicate sensuality that I wanted to capture that I could only get with a girl. So I had this inner turmoil of "Should I revisit the concept?" vs. "Hell no, Billy! Do something new every time!"Eventually I realized that by revisiting the concept with a woman it would be something different. It would be a beautiful exploration of liberty that I just couldn't resist. 

I always get what I want, naturally, so I called Colette and told her to meet me for a shoot! First we took extra care and completely lined our space with painters plastic to be really careful not to make a mess. (Forewarning: We did.) We were aproaching the dust a little differently this round and using baby powder... a lot of baby powder. Like the we-can-powder-all-the-baby-booties-in-China amount of baby powder. So once the space was "secure" we jumped right in. Colette was a real sport since basically she was breathing and eating baby powder over the course of three hours. Once we played with enough ideas of covering her in the dust we decided to clean up. 

I came prepared and armed myself with some cleaning materials. I thought it was only fitting to bring baby wipes... So we rolled up all the plastic and it actually did a pretty good job! Once we cleaned up the three or four spots of powder that got through the plastic we decided to pack up. As we turned around we realized everything behind us was covered in baby powder residue. (I really like the word residue) Basically we spent the last 30 min of our shoot on hands and knees scrubbing everything in the studio with baby wipes... It's not a fun process. Overall, set-up, shoot, and clean-up took 3 hrs. 

I really took a while editing this one. It took me about 4 hrs overall. I wanted it to be breathtaking but hopeful. The hardest part was choosing which clips to use because I really fell in love with all of the footage. It needed nothing. No reverse, no color correction, I loved it just as it was. Once I compiled all the clips I wanted I rearranged them to see how I wanted to present the work. I liked the song I was using but I felt like there was something missing. Hope. It was missing that hopefulness that I so badly wanted. I decided to edit in one of my favorite speech's of all time. Charlie Chaplin's final speech in "The Great Dictator". It was exactly what I wanted. It fit the description of the work perfectly. It spreads unity, and joy. It does everything I wish for my work choreographically, visually, and emotively to do.

I love this one. I hope you do too. 

Project7: Dust

Subject: Joey Arrigo

Project7 Time: 3.5hrs

Project52 Time: 41hrs

This project turned out to be one of my favorites. I feel like I end up saying that every week, but it's true! They just keep getting better and better! I was worried at first with this one because I didn't have a lot of time to commit to it. I decided to step away from the idea of complex project and just really show the body, much like Project1. And boy did I pick the right body!

Joey Arrigo has been a friend of mine for a while and we were working together this past weekend when I had the idea to use him as the subject for Project7. I rented a studio for two hours on Sunday night and we got to work! I decided to paint Joey's arms and chest in a white dust-like make-up I felt like I wanted to give him an other-worldly physical quality to match his unique movement. I also enjoy the dust created a tired look. I gave Joey some improv ideas based on the image of clouds of dust and small explosions of dust and I got the exact movement I wanted. Overall, we set-up, lit, painted, shot all the footage we needed, and cleaned up in two hours.

Editing this one was pretty difficult, mainly because I had so many beautiful shots I wanted to use but my track was only around 4.5 mins. I wanted it to feel very intimate as well (my favorite moment in the film is at 1:15, and pictured to the left) so I wanted to make sure I included a lot of close-to-body shots to see the intricacies of hist muscles, the dust, and the undulation of his spine. It took me around one and a half hours to edit this bad boy (the film). 

I hope you enjoy! As always let me know your thoughts!

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project6: Element

Subject: Skylar Boykin

Project6 Time: 6.5hrs

Project52 Time: 37.5hrs

I wanted Project6 to be special because I was on tour with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet this past weekend in Dallas, TX. I'm a huge fan of the dance training in Texas especially from a studio called Dance Industry in Plano. I wanted to take advantage of the local resources so I called up Skylar Boykin. She's a really kickass girl who dances with such grace and beastliness simultaneously, that I couldn't resist. 

We decided to shoot outside of the theater the Cedar Lake was performing at, the AT&T Performing Arts Center. It has a really wonderful sleek modern park out front and was calling my name since the day we had arrived. There was a great grass area with a stunningly crafted arts building behind it, resembling a sort of iron-work forest, some long stone bench areas, and the best part... a reflecting pool! As we shot, I felt a little elemental theme going on, which is how I ended up with the title. 

I gave Skylar different very basic tasks per set; a line oriented task for the grass, a falling concept for the  stone, and a circular idea for the water. I tried to direct her on how each element would function kinesthetically. She provided me with way more than I could've hoped. I found myself literally laughing with excitement at points while I was editing. We filmed everything in 2hrs.

***UNRELATED FUNNY SIDE STORY***

We soon realized that we were indeed in the south, as we shot the scenes on the stone. Here we were minding our own business, creating a nice little artsy film when out of no where a representative from the theater comes up. As I've said before not all the places I shoot necessarily give us permission to shoot so we just sort of do it and deal with the situation if it arises. (Art takes no prisoners!!!) I feel her disapproval and turn to take my scolding. I received just that, but not for what I thought. The little lady, in her finest southern accent say, "I hope you know, this is a real family-friendly kinda place here. We don't really find some of the positions she's in very appropriate." Dance? You don't find dance positions appropriate? At a performing arts complex?!? "I would appreciate it if y'all could just tone it down." I politely agreed and she went on her way. For the remainder of the shoot she stood inside the glass lobby of the theater and watched our every move. Praying that the wind would pick up just right and blow Skylar's dress up so she could throw her disapproval stamp right onto our faces. 

***END OF UNRELATED FUNNY SIDE STORY***

I edited this one on the flight home to NYC which is why it took so long. Final Cut Pro doesn't really get along with my MacBook Pro. I had fun with this one since there were so many different looks to edit in. I decided to be a bit more musical than usual with this one and I really enjoy how it turned out. It took around 4.5hrs to edit this badboy.

Hope you like it!

Project5: Vaporize

Subject: McKenna Birmingham

Project5 Time: 8hrs

Project52 Time: 31hrs

Ok... I know... this is late. I've addressed it and now we can move forward. I'm realizing that as my year goes on and my schedule fills up that Project52 isn't the easiest task. Surprisingly it's not the filming and editing that is hard to find time for. It's the consistently updating and promoting the project that gets pushed under the table. But I'm doing it now to catch up! So here it is:

This is one of my favorite projects to date. I decided to shoot my former-roommate, Juilliard classmate, and long time friend, McKenna Birmingham. She's a really wonderful mover and has such an eye for film. She helped me a lot, not only by dancing, but also with ideas of different angles to shoot from and ways to pull off some of the "magic" with the balloons. So this is a HUGE "Thank You, McKenna!"

I had wanted to do this idea of the balloons leading someone around for a while and finally felt it was the right time and place to do it. I had a vision of someone leaving this life, but not necessarily in a morbid, sad, woe-is-me, dramatic way. I felt like the balloons allow the viewer to instantly associate the film with a happy or nostalgic thought, so what better than to use it as a guide to a more serious inevitable event? I didn't want to give death, in this case, a negative connotation so I tried to make it a more surreal, or even spiritual occurrence in this subject's life. 

I let McKenna be pretty free with the movement and asked her to just move where the balloons took her. We had many shots that didn't end up in the Project because the balloons would get so tangled from the wind that I would have to jump in the frame to save McKenna from being strangled. I think she and I both found it much more difficult to film than we had anticipated. Overall, it took us around 4.5hrs to shoot the entire film.

Editing this one was fairly easy since there was a clear narrative for me to work with. I really had no challenges with this one, other than to figure out what music I wanted to pair it with. I took me around 3.5hrs, some Indian food, and two glasses of Whiskey to edit Project5! ;)

Enjoy!

Project4: Surface

Subject: Brooke Jones

Project4 Time: 4.5hrs

Project52 Time: 23hrs

So this week I've been a little sick which has thrown me a lot of schedule! I just finished and uploaded this week's Project about 2 hours ago. I knew what I wanted to do this week, but I had no time or energy to accomplish it until Saturday morning. I asked Brooke (whose a beautiful dancer from Denver, CO and new Lunger) to come over to my apartment building in the morning, and we got to work right away.

I wanted to focus on a bit sleeker of a look, compared to the other Projects up until this point. Brooke and I decided to focus on the idea of surface. All of the movement is either inspired by or dependent on a surface. We also wanted to touch on the idea of cloning just a bit. Almost as if another form of this person is surfacing. 

We started by creating some phrase work and then allowed Brooke to do her thing and improvise a bit to get a good amount of footage. From here I was able to edit the footage to get what we needed. We only spent about 2.5 hours creating and filming. (That even included a run to B&H to grab a tripod!)

I just started using Motion to edit and I had a lot of fun with this footage. I took me about 2 hours to edit. It's a quick project, but I really enjoy the finished product.

Let me know your thoughts!

Project3: Monocarp

Subject: Ali Castro

Project3 Time: 5hrs

Project52 Time: 18.5hrs

Project3: Monocarp is featuring longtime Lunger and my best friend, Ali Castro. We were leading a workshop at Princeton University for diSiac Dance Company this past weekend and got so inspired by the beautiful campus that we decided to do a Project right then and there! I was admiring the architecture of the campus all day. In particular, I loved the contrast of the greenery and the use of stone and brick in the all of the buildings. I didn't know what I wanted to do for Project3, but I definitely wanted to play with this idea. 

Ali rehearsing in her coat

We started out by just making a phrase in the East Pyne building. It's a beautiful building, with an absolutely fantastic courtyard in the middle. (It actually houses the foreign language courses, I beleive) It was pretty cold so we made up the phrase in our coats rather quickly. Once Ali had the phrase we shot it quickly from a couple of different angles and then did a few close ups. Overall, this portion of the shoot took around 1.5 hrs.

From there, we moved on to find a place to film the contrast we stumbled upon an area that we had walked through earlier that day called the Prospect Gardens. It is behind Prospect House where President Woodrow Wilson once lived! We wandered to a less manicured area of the garden and jumped into the middle of some shrubbery. I gave Ali a very short gesture phrase and had her elaborate off of it. I shot this from three different angles and had her lay down for a few close ups. We had to do this pretty fast as the sun was going down and I didn't want to run into the graininess problem that I had in Project2. We shot this segment in only 30 min.

I edited this one quite easily. It only took me around 2 hrs. It just sort of fell together how I wanted it. I decided to play with a bit of trailing in the footage because I wanted to not only show the architecture of the grounds but also the structures in the movement. I find that when the trails increase in number the movement really takes a 3-dimensional shape that I find very fascinating. 

After looking at the footage I felt that her character embodied something rather magical, or nymphish. I also thought that the contrasting stone footage had a heavy feeling, especially when paired with the movement. I had the idea of creating a monocarpic person. Someone who blooms and celebrates her sensuality and only once and then passes and is in a more barren state. 

So now I present to you: Project3: Monocarp

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project2: Soiree

Subject: Shelby Colona

Project1 Time: 6.5hrs

Project52 Time: 13.5hrs

Project2 happened very randomly. I was going to work with Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and on my walk there I thought to myself, "I'm going to film tonight!" I texted all of the dancers that have committed to this project and found out who was available. After deciding who the subject would be, Shelby Colona, I had to figure out where we would shoot at. I remembered a location in Central Park called the Bethesda Arcade. It's a hauntingly stunning tiled arcade underneath the Bethesda Terrace located right by the (go figure) Bethesda Fountain. 

Inspiration photos by Nir Arieli. Dancers: Nathan Madden and Esme Boyce

I first found the location after viewing some photos by my friend and incredible visual artist, Nir Arieli. When I saw his photos years ago I knew that one day I would create something in that space. The space has an emptiness that I'm drawn to. And the fact that it's in the middle of one of the busiest parks in the world, gives it that little bit of irony that I love.

Since you can't just go film in Central Park, we had to be a little sneaky. It doesn't help that we aren't filming some natural pedestrian video that we could perhaps be mistaken as tourists. No, we decided to have a crazed girl waltzing on her own, drinking wine (illegal), throwing the glasses (also illegal), and filming in one of the parks most treasured historical places of architecture (illegal without a permit... which we didn't have). Needless to say, we had to be careful.

We decided to shoot at 11:30pm. We figured there wouldn't be anyone in the park really, other than the few stray dogs and crazies. Since the park doesn't close until 1am this gave us more than enough time to shoot what we wanted. We didn't prep movement for this shoot at all. I gave Shelby a structured improvisation and a few directives to follow and I let her do her thing! I trust her enough that I felt comfortable that I would get the shots I wanted. We ran into the small problem that there were no outlets to plug any extra lighting into, so the shots were a little dark and have a little too much grain in them for my liking, but overall I think the shoot went great! We were in and out of there in 2 hours. 

Editing this one was a toughie. I was struggling a lot with the quality of the footage because of the graininess. Once I got over that and decided it was ok, I just had to figure out how I wanted to present the movement. I knew I wanted a slight narrative, but I didn't know how to get it. I decided to create an atmosphere of a cocktail party. We see Shelby being social and flirty while enjoying her wine, and assume there are others around her. When we see the wide shot we realize she's alone, talking and having her own little soiree. She starts a little drunken dance and accidentally throws her glass. The dance continues and by time it smashes she is awaken from her drunken dream and realizes in the sober world she is alone. It took me about 4.5 hrs to edit this baby!

Let me know what you thought! 

Billy Bell | Artistic Director

Project1: Enshroud

Subject: Alex Cottone

Project1 Time: 7hrs

Project52 Time: 7hrs

Project1 was a collaboration between myself and a long-time Lunger Alex Cottone. It is a short film exploring the ideas of covering, wrapping, and crumbing. I didn't want to be too deep or profound with this I simply wanted to give the viewer a chance to see movement that is structural and not necessarily emotive. I find it interesting that there is still emotional content even though the directives during creation had only structural and time-based information.

We started with Alex creating 8 structures, we then had him create transitions between structures that I randomly called out. From here we started playing with different insertions in the phrase like adding pivot points, dramatic directional shifts, and repeats. At this point, I had Alex insert a phrase I had created into his phrase in various places. Once the phrase was developed we started to "crumble" certain shapes and add in moments of suspended time. After all of these phases were complete his material was locked in and it was time to shoot. We spent a total of 5 hours to develop material.

The next day we rented a studio, developed the idea of the space, created the space and shot the footage in only 2 hours. With the help of Ashley Robicheaux and Ross Katen, we were able to do this all fairly quickly. We played with Alex's material and shot it from different angles and then started to play with he plastic a bit with some ideas of wrapping and covering almost to a suffocating point. The trickiest part was finding lighting that would still show the shapes we wanted to see but also be dark and heavy enough to achieve the look we wanted.

Overall, I''m very satisfied with the ease and speed of this project. Can't wait for Project2! 01.14.13.

Billy Bell | Artistic Director