Last post I talked a lot about the first round of editing, which was critical in helping me see how the piece was all going to come together. So, here is the first draft of that process. As anticipated, it both helped clarify yet also changed a few things about my process.
You'll notice the video mostly in silence, which perhaps means you'll better understand the panic in my previous post ;) Music will bring it to life, I promise, and I am meeting with my music collaborator on Wednesday to experiment. More on that soon!
The choreographic process has also changed since the editing began. Originally I was using Authentic Movement (basically impulse-following-improv) and filming longer segments at a time then deciding which parts to use based on what worked within the edited sequence. The slow section, before the heartbeat comes in represents the first trimester, and the Authentic Movement method ended up working pretty well as a way to create movement.
After the heartbeat comes in and I start moving around more, this method stopped working as well. It's no secret that pregnancy comes with a hefty amount of mood shifting, which meant following what I was feeling in any given moment of filming just felt too disjointed stylistically. Luckily I had enough footage that I was able to build a sequence that worked. I must admit that concept overshadowed authenticity for a bit here. While the goal was to have a small clip of footage from each week, to make it work I had to use multiple clips from some weeks and completely discard all footage from other weeks.
This was especially tricky as my belly grew, and there are a few moments I wish I could go back and retake the film, but alas, I can't!
The introduction of the heartbeat represents the transition into the second trimester and will have a different look and feel than the first and third (what will the third look like? - I have no idea yet!). For this section, I am transitioning to a more standard choreographic method for myself. Now that I have a string of movement segments, I come in to each filming session reviewing the existing sequence in the video, and then adding on to the end of it. This allows me to make decisions on use of space and movement variety in a more structured way, that hopefully will make it feel like a more cohesive start to finish piece of work by the end.
The video above goes to about 20 weeks out of 40, so we're about half way there! Hope you've enjoyed the journey with me so far :)