Solo Performance – Emily Bland

In my previous post on projection, I mentioned having light fill my body toe to neck; with this in mind, I thought about using the sound of wine being poured as the light filled my body. I wanted to distort the sound and slow it down. Here is the original sound effect and underneath is the edited version I created.

Original:

(SoundEffectsArchive, 2014)

Edited:

Even though I liked the outcome of the edited wine pouring effect, I am not entirely sure anymore if it would be best suited to my current ideas. Involving such a slow sound may take energy away from my performance as I am aiming for it to be quite high intensity.

 

Lara Croft:

I would like to use the beginning of this Lara Croft track alongside a projection of falling dots of light. However, I am concerned that, by using this track, my audience may think that I am attempting to become Lara Croft and that would never be my intention. My intentions are currently to embody certain characteristics of the fictional gaming character but still to be myself.

(Lara Croft Tomb Raider Gaming Channel, 2013)

An alternative track that could be used instead of Lara Croft is Halo 1 Theme Song. Master Chief, the main character of the combat game, Halo, appeared on my initial mind map. He appeared there for his strength and endurance, a gaming character who I admire in those ways. As You can see from the image below, Master Chief appears almost indestructible. Indestructible is how I sometimes feel when powering through workouts. I would like to get the sense of mental strength through to the audience by including either Lara Croft or both Lara and Master Chief.

By using the Halo Theme song while embodying the characteristics of Lara Croft, I could mix together two of my idols so it is not just me becoming Lara Croft.

(TheCaaze, 2012)

Works Cited:

Fandom (2013) Master Chief Halo 3.jpg. Available from http://cwacharacter.wikia.com/wiki/File:Master_Chief_Halo_3.jpg [accessed 19 April 2017].

Lara Croft Tomb Raider Gaming Channel (2013) Lara Croft Tomb Raider :Anniversary – FULL OST. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svrAtAGw2Sk&t=130s [accessed 5 March 2017].

SoundEffectsArchive (2014) Wine Poured Into Glass Sound Effect. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlYg2JOu70Q&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE&index=7 [accessed 5 March 2017].

TheCaaze (2012) Halo 1 Theme song. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebJvgkYJ6Ds&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE&index=27 [accessed 5 March 2017].

I know I would like to use projection of some sort. To begin with, I started my research with projection on to the body and found a couple of videos that appealed in some ways.

 

(Roura, 2017)

The light that gradually fills up the torso upwards (1:24-1:38mins) is something that I can see working for the entire body. The light filling up the body would signify the warming up of the body for exercise. This projection could be instead of using glow in the dark paint as I believe I do not have access to UV lighting.

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(References 4 You, 2015)

The little dot of light moving at 8:50 mins is not something that I want to use however, it did spark the idea of having dots of white light falling projected on to the space. The idea seems almost dreamy to me, it would let an audience know that the state is changing and that they are entering an abstract world.

I searched You Tube for some falling light, focusing on space and the universe as a search because supernovas appeared on my mind map I did as a starter exercise so I wanted to add some colour to the falling light. Here are some of the videos I found which are contenders:

 

(AA VFX, 2016)

(AA VFX, 2017)

 

(AA VFX, 2017)

 

(AA VFX, 2017)

I will have to wait until I have use of a projector in the studio that I am performing in before I know which video would work best projected on to me and the black curtain that will be behind me. I feel like the red or the gold one would probably be two of the best choices as there wouldn’t be a harsh line where you can see where the projection ends as the backgrounds for these are very dark.

 

Works Cited:

AA VFX (2016) 4K 10min Colofrul Longest Falling Stars Best Free Video Hightest Resoluton 2160p . Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEmLRVwUjbQ&index=12&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE [accessed 5 March 2017].

AA VFX (2017) 4K 5:00Min. ♥ Shining Bright Stars Bokeh Cycle ♥ 2160p 60fps FREE Motion Background AA VFX. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwolJP_pKVI&index=10&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE [accessed 5 March 2017].

AA VFX (2017) 60:00 Minutes ~Purple Blue Moving Stars~ Longest (!!!) FREE HD Motion Background AA VFX. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgg1xGSGw0s&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE&index=8 [accessed 5 March 2017].

AA VFX (2017) FREE! Motion Backgrounds ✪ 4K 60fps Red Stars Slow Flight ✪ AA VFX. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHX_EW4tY0Q&index=9&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE [accessed 5 March 2017].

References 4 You (2015) Full Length Live Face Projection Mapping. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ9MoF5QowM&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE&index=5 [accessed 5 March 2017].

Roura, D. (2017) Body light projection. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRPecPFmJjU&index=6&t=112s&list=PLMWdxS3yDYCOeFAjdq7ofymT0xyTmwQWE [accessed 5 March 2017].

In the past month, I have been toying with an idea based around the gym. I thought about the process and mental preparation I go through in order to fully begin my workout.

On the 2nd March, I started off with doing a home workout while listening to my workout playlists. I had a pen and paper by my side to jot down any thoughts that came to me while exercising.

I did my usual warm ups:

-Stretching head to toe

-Low intensity cardio (Light jogging, lunge jumps etc.)

I ended up writing down what was motivating me to get through the main body of my workout.

From this mind map, I picked out a few things to focus on:

-Glow in the dark paint

-Supernova (The use of bright space-like colours)

-Lara Croft

I imagined using glow in the dark paint to make certain parts of my body visible, like in the photo above, as a way of highlighting the parts of my body that have warmed up ready for exercise. I thought I could be applying the paint starting from my toes up to the top of my neck and down to my fingers. I imagined this happening with the Lara Croft Anniversary game soundtrack playing alongside the physical movement.

 Works Cited:

Lux nox. (2015) Are You Ready to Party? Available from http://sveteshtiboi.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/are-you-ready-to-party-httpwww.html [accessed 2nd March 2017].

I have been struggling these first few weeks to come up with anything even slightly creative for a performance. I have had a couple of ideas of themes, one was loneliness. However, I found that I could not fully commit myself to pursue them as I did not feel any real connection to them or have the desire to develop ideas without making material personal and I did not want to do this for the theme of loneliness. From discussing ideas in class, concerning recreating the feeling of loneliness for participants, I decided that spending my last semester at university should not be focussed on such a dark and upsetting topic.

A thought occurred to me, at the end of our most recent Solo Performance session, which would involve using gym equipment as a starting point for any performance ideas that were to follow. This led to me thinking about things that make me feel good – a polar opposite to my initial idea that was focusing on loneliness.

 

This is my own fail-safe list of things that always lift my mood:

– Gym (Working hard – I NEED to break a sweat!)

– Food (Not fast food! Made from scratch and full of flavour)

– Dogs (Especially my sister’s dog, Molly)

– Wine (Red, Champagne & Prosecco)

– Music (Wide range)

– Candles (Preferably cinnamon)

 

After creating this list, I focused on the music and started creating a Spotify playlist that consists only of my feel-good songs.

I would like to use all of these things on my list to create some kind of experience room. I do not know how this will be done quite yet but that will be the next step in my process.