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!