Abstract: North in 360°is a creative research collaboration between our Centre for Advanced Training (CAT) scheme at Northern School of Contemporary Dance and filmmaker Wayne Sables. The project consisted of a week’s collaborative artistic enquiry with young dancers from across the Yorkshire region exploring sites across Leeds as a backdrop for the making of a screen work using 360° filming techniques. Through the project we wanted to explore: How dance artists to engage with the process of creating new vocabulary as a result of a new form of video capture, frame the material in a new format; Consider, edit and question the nature of dance composition when applied to the genre of screendance; find new audiences for dance as a result of this medium and analyse whether it is possible to give the audience a unique and unusual viewing perspective.
Link to film: NSCD CAT 360 FILM PROJECT
Findings and conclusion:
As this technology is new it warranted further investigation into how it can not only capture dance but develop a new audience engagement system. There are several ways to capture 360 video easily with minimal intrusion, the difficulty has always been editing or stitching the footage together. Most 360 camera handle the editing at source and are designed to be inclusive units. However we intend to go beyond this and extract the footage and edit it in dedicated 360 editing software. Premier Pro by adobe has just released an update in June 2016 to edit 360 video. Part of this research was to examine the collaborative approaches of the creator and the filmmaker to create, capture and then edit, as an analysis of the components, form and structures which are particular to this genre. These elemental requisites will challenge creative modes of enquiry for both disciplines (film and dance), hopefully offering further insights into practicalities and modes of expression.
