Non-Verbal performance

Prior to class 15 I had not put much consideration into the moments of my work that went beyond the verbal realm. However, Robin reminded the class of the moments non-verbal performance was in fact displayed in many of our works, by showing us a short montage of the times we utilised performance without dialogue. It was only until then I realised that this element of performance played an important role in much of my work. This was a reminder for me that, through subconscious, I did in fact unties moments in many texts to tell a story through action alone. 

Moving forward, this reminder of verbal performance, allowed me to utilise the performative display of characters receiving dialogue or carrying out actions not requiring vocal performance. Realising the value of this, I was prompted to critique prior works and saw that a lot of my previous editing style was heavily reliant on spoken text. This reliance had many of my edits possess a mundane and back and forth feel, as many of the editing displays only cut between the spoken dialogue of the performers, rather than placing a little more emphasis on the performance of characters receiving the dialogue. 

Evidence of my increased awareness of non-verbal performance is evident in my editing of exercise 7 and 8, however, moving forward I’m more inclined to further explore this as I feel that I could display much more of the non-verbal elements of on screen performance.

Decoupage

Due to the nature of this semester’s working environment, as a class we were unable to produce work that was constructed in the same location as each other. However, birthed out of the restrictive conditions, we were forced to use much more considered approaches when producing our interpretations of the provided texts. As previously mentioned, the importance of preparation is an essential facet to developing work with a team, especially while all being in different locations. Especially when producing work with characters in the same space. The considered approaches to our shot development saw the use of decoupage play a huge role in many of the successful edits.

Without the liberty of extreme experimentation, we were forced to produce work in a very planned and considered way, thus the use of decoupage. Working with disparate locations my team and I viewed the texts through a fragmented lens, by deconstructing text narratives and by breaking up the piece into possible shots, to further understand how the assembly of all elements could be made possible and best translate moments within the texts.

With the constraints of this semester, I have realised the value of narrative deconstruction for the execution of shot planning. This sort of preparation allows for a more thorough understanding of how camera placement and movement can best translate a text visually. Working with the idea of Decoupage is something that I will use moving forward, as I am someone who works best with meticulous preparation and visual understanding.