FILM

Brief: Create a short film using found image and sound. The objective is to show the audience something in a new way; about our world, human existence, our every day life.



CONCEPT
The concept of my film is to document the life of the ballroom club kids scene, exploring how it has transformed from the infamous club kids of the 1980s and drag balls, which inspired hit documentary Paris is Burning, into what is left of the scene today. I also want to explore attitudes of homosexuality and queer culture, and how this has also transformed. Illustrating how the ballroom scene, club kids and drag is still used today as an act of defiance against social normativity and homophobic and transphobic attitudes.
I will primarily be looking at 'voguing', a dance style which stemmed from the drag balls in 1960s NYC. "Vogue" is a highly stylised form of dance created by the underground black and latino LGBTQ+ community in Harlem New York. Historian,Tim Lawrence, claims vogueing originated from the Harlem Hamilton Lodge (NYC)'s first queer masquerade ball in 1969.
(https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/07/how-voguing-came-back-in-vogue/)
Tsione Wolde-Michael, writer and editor for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, describes voguing as:

 Through dance, drag queens showed how gender is a performance – they pretended to put on makeup or “beat face”, style their hair, and put on extravagant clothes. This creative performance through voguing was even used to peacefully settle disputes among rivals in an environment that assumed a degree of mutual respect and compassion. Using dance and pantomime, the voguers would “read” each other. Ultimately, the winner would be the person who “threw the best shade.” 

In their article, A Brief History of Voguing, Walde-Michael goes on to describe the modern day ancestor of voguing:

Today, New Way is characterized by more rigid movements and “clicks” or joint contortions. Vogue Fem uses similar “New Way” elements but focuses on speed, flow and stunts. Regardless of the style, voguing shows the courage of black and Latino LGBTQ communities to make an art form that goes beyond creative expression. Vogue offers a sense of identity, belonging and dignity in a world that does not fully value their lives

Ballroom culture grew from Harlem's drag balls, creating a community for queer people in a time where being gay was still illegal in the US. Surrogate families were formed by regular competitors, many of the regulars having being rejected from their families, were working-class, poor, often sex workers and many who suffered from HIV/AIDS. In Paris is Burning (1990) infamous drag queen and mother of the house of Labeija, Pepper Labeija quotes:

" A house is a family, for those who don't have family"

My aim for the project is to create a film which illustrates an integral part of LGBTQ+ history through the NYC club scene, to highlight the importance of safe spaces and community for LGBTQ+ people and to document the defiance, the unapologetic queerness, which exists in the life of our club scenes.

MEDIA
Part of the briefing for this project was to create our film using video software, this is something I have never used in previous projects, I shall be using Premiere to create my film with an aim to become confident in this software for use in both this project and future projects.  I will be using news footage from both the US and the UK which was allowed for public broadcast at the time in order to show the public attitudes to LGBTQ+ folk and how this has changed over time. I will combine this with modern day voguing footage from vogue competitions across the world. I am hoping the combination of the film will convey how the act of voguing is used as a tool of defiance to the prejudice attitudes we have faces and still face today.



RESEARCH
My research consisted of contextual research about the subject here, and research of different ways to approach creating the film, here. I also completed technical research through video editing tutorials both online and through Adobe's Premiere Pro, which I will document in this blog post.

PROCESS

• This first video test on premiere pro is experimentation of clipping and replacing film, I began by downloading the videos I wanted to use from youtube and experimenting with how different segments can be cut from the downloaded film. 
• The clips are different sizes within the frame, which is something I later discovered could be edited. I like the quality of how the clips are cut into each other, yet think it would look cleaner if the audio and video are blended between clips. 
• To improve my skills from this initial test I completed three Premiere Pro tutorials exploring; sound transition, film transition, and adding text and titles; this is documented in my notes book, and was useful in improving the professional quality of my film.

• This second clip is my initial experimentation with cutting and editing dancing scenes. When choosing the song I wanted one with a strong and fast paced beat which would match with the rythm of the dancing videos. As Walde-Michael stated above, voguing is about rigid movements, 'clicks' or body contortions, which I felt would fit my song choice.
•  Making this clip was simply an experimentation of how I could edit the dancing videos I was using, by changing the speed of the clips, repeating specific clips, and matching the movement of each clip to the beat of the soundtrack. I therefore edited this video using only found video, for ease while experimenting. 
• To fit the brief I will be using a number of found vogue ball footage, in order to incorporate as much found film as possible.
• Some of the editing could be cleaner using transitional effects for the video.
•  Film used:

• This clip explores further footage taken from news broadcasts and television shows from the UK and US which expose the previous homophobia which was shown on screens across the world. The footage dates from the 1960s - late 1990s. 
• Here I began to experiment with transitional effects for both the video and audio footage, which I felt made this clips within this film run smoothly.
• I feel as though when attatching this film to the previous film, there is too much of a contrast between the videos in terms of sound, for this reason for my final piece I began to experiment with having two audio tracks running at different volumes,lowing the volume of the music and having the integral speaking at a higher volume.
• From this I shall also look at adjusting the volume throughout one clip, so when the film returns to the dancing segment there isn't a sharp volume change but one that flows more naturally.

FINAL FILM 

The Life of Ballroom from Ryan on Vimeo.

I hope this final film conveys my proposed concept, in illustrating the life of the underground ballroom scene and how it has risen from widespread prejudice against LGBTQ+ people, and how we exist and navigate through our spaces through this.
Throughout this process I considered how I would meet each briefing criteria:

• PROCESS: At the beginning of this project I had never previously used adobe premiere, I feel I managed to learn a range of new skills in the process of creating this film. Throughout the film creation process I have documented tutorials I have completed in my note book, and have applied this knowledge when developing each segment of footage I created. 
• REALISATION: This project was an independent project, however throughout my creative process I collected peer feedback at various stages, applying this feedback to developing my design.
• ENQUIRY and KNOWLEDGE: As the brief for this project was to create a film using only found footage, it was integral for me to collect a wide range of research and utilise this throughout. I completed research on my concept here, and research on various films I found interesting here. Research was also important whilst creating the film in order to develop a better understanding of using Premiere Pro, I therefore completed research of tutorials via adobe which is documented in my notebook. Finally the most integral part of my research was to actually collect the footage to create my film. I found video sites such as Library Archive, and Box of Broadcasts to be particularly difficult to navigate as there was either far to much material or none at all. I therefore collected the majority of my footage from youtube, which I feel hindered my research process as a large amount of the material I wished to use was copyrighted; if commercialising this project this would severely impact my final outcome, as most of the footage I have used is copyrighted.
• COMMUNICATION: Again I feel my communication throughout this project has been strong, as my blog allows me to not only document my work throughout but easily be able to navigate back to my research, and concept, I have also found it extremely useful to continuously refer to the brief and reference this in my blog. This communication as been beneficial for my development throughout the project as I am able to refer back to personal and peer feedback from each stage with ease. However, this project was harder for me to scrutinise my practical processes as a lot of these processes are lost once I have created the video, in the future when working with digital applications I think it would be useful to screenshot the actual processes within the application in order to refer to this with ease. 

CRIT FEEDBACK

• "Your film is really interesting in the way you combine the two types of footage, the dancing matches the beat really well. When the clips of news footage change back to dancing, the audio volume changes dramatically, and lags by a couple of seconds, which could be refined."
• "The way the dancing clips fade into each other works really well and some points however it would be nice to try other transition effects between the clips."
• "It's quite a relevant topic to be looking at with current conversations, I like how the dancing fades into the news reports. When you transferred the film to the larger projector screen it's very obvious the films are at different resolutions, would have been interesting to doctor the resolutions to be similar, would also make the film flow better."

CONCLUSION 

This project has been an interesting exploration of using new media, new processes and new outcome formats. I feel in the short time I used Premiere I managed to improve my skills greatly, I do feel further programme knowledge would have improved my final outcome, and this is something I would like to return to in future projects. Finally, I am really happy with how I managed to illustrate my concept, I am fascinated with the political aspects including LGBTQ+ rights and looking at how I can illustrate my own activism, in future projects I will return to similar themes.