Interactive video journal, week 3: project feedback

This week I presented my work to my class for critique, and got some helpful responses and feedback about the material. I realized that in the first few weeks of the project I had been focused on the technical aspects of the project, and was not necessarily considering the broader conceptual intentions for the video. I noted that I’m approaching the project in a way that is new for me, for one by letting the technological tools I’m using guide the direction of the project, and also in collaborating with two creative individuals from outside my field. I like the idea of working on a project that is not completely self-directed, and really want the final product to reflect all of our influences and be truly collaborative. But at the same time I want the final video to incorporate some of the broader conceptual themes and interests that drive my work.

Sharon Daniel encouraged me to design a specific strategy for collaboration between myself and the other artists working on this video together. I realized the importance of having an established approach to the creative process, especially since I haven’t really worked in this kind of collaboration before, and we are working remotely from one another (Chase and Tatiana live in LA). We created a private Facebook group so we could all post and share links to my RGBD video samples, Chase’s Sound Cloud, and Tatiana’s You Tube channel of choreography videos. It’s also just a great place for us to share links to stuff that inspires us. In terms of the production process, we’ve decided that Chase should finish the song first so we could then establish the length and pacing for the video, and start working on the choreography. For the choreography, since we have to coordinate being in the same city and setting up staging and lighting to shoot, we think the best approach is for Tatiana to work on 4 8-count sets of choreography at a time (about 30 seconds each), and upload videos of herself performing to the song. I can work on the same 30 segments using video I capture of myself performing, and then play around with the video techniques ie. camera movement or coloration of the image, and then get back to Tatiana with suggestions for choreography changes that would best suit the staging for the shoot or the effect that we want to incorporate at that particular moment in the song. This way we can work together progressively through the song, and have clear records of exactly how we want the choreography to proceed as well as how each shot will be manipulated and rendered after the final video is shot.

In terms of the technical aspects of the project, I think the general consensus from the class critique was to pursue more of RGBD toolkit technology, and consider other options aside from using the Kinect with Jitter, so I am looking at things like Cinder and openFrameworks, but am not feeling too groovy at the moment about working with C++!