Motion8 (2 min. 2007) Directed and edited by Lester Alfonso as part of 8 Short Dance Films — Made Under Pressure choreographed by Kate Story with music by OFF THE INTERNATIONAL RADAR.
Back in the day (pre-Facebook), one of my videos was featured on the front page MySpace. At the time, the website was a really happening thing on the internet. Being featured meant a big audience. This was the first and only real experience I had with seeing my video go viral on the internet in real-time. Thousands of views racked up in just a couple of hours. It was a thrill. Salon.com later did a feature on it as well and called it Eight in Motion: one dance collective.
I had made the video as part of a workshop where eight films were made by different directors. We all had a table, a chair, a telephone, and a dancer. We had fifteen minutes to plan and shoot it and we only had five minutes of tape each.
It was November 15, 2006. Public Energy was presenting a workshop on making a “dance film” facilitated by director/choreographer Jenn Goodwin and sponsored by the Peterborough Arts Umbrella.
Jenn Goodwin provided the situation with some simple props we had to use: a table, a chair, a telephone and a dancer (Kate Story). Since everybody had different ideas, we decided to make 8 different films. We had fifteen minutes to plan (storyboard) and shoot it.
As the video editor, I would have to take the footage and edit them all in the next 48 hrs. I had hand-scribbled notes to work from. There were a lot of ideas and everybody was open to my interpretation of the footage. The films evolved organically. I had to restrict my process a bit so that it wouldn’t take too long.
I had intended my own film to have more than one angle but we really didn’t have much time. As I began to chop from every 12 frames to every 6 frames at the end, the effect was astonishing.
All the music is by OFF THE INTERNATIONAL RADAR from one CD that Jenn had given me. Brilliant. It worked! I restricted myself to using only those 6 tracks. There were some incredible sound coincidences. For Ray Barker’s film, the part when Kate put the phone down, there was no corresponding sound of a phone being hung up. This sound was actually on the music track, I didn’t add it. It was perfectly in sync the first time I slapped the music to the footage by sheer coincidence. The footage was all silent so I had to find canned sound-effects (for Michael Morritt’s film) and in some cases actually doing some foley work (for Jess and Sara’s film).
Overall the films were enthusiastically received when they were premiered at the Artspace Mudroom a couple of days later.
The word/number combination “motion8” kept coming to my head as I edited all these films. Esther Vincent thought it’s like “dv8” and I swear I wasn’t thinking of it as a direct response to another dance collective (but maybe that could be kinda cool.)
The filmmakers really just left it all up to me so it’s a real co-creation.
The workshop participants were me, Leigh Macdonald, Michael Morritt, Barbra Stocking, Patti Shaughnessy, Jess Rowland, Sommer Sanderson, Esther Vincent, and (the late), Ray Barker who passed away in 2016. Ray was a member of the Old Men Dancing dance troupe and was very involved in the Peterborough Community as a long time Trent Radio host and volunteer in many organizations.
Below are all the 8 Short Films individually.
Directed by Ray Barker
Directed by Kris Keating
Directed by Barbra Stocking
Directed by Michael Morritt
Directed by Leigh Macdonald
Directed by Sara Roque and Patti Shaughnessy
Directed by Jess Rowland and Sommer Sanderson
Directed by Lester Alfonso
More soon so stay tuned! —LA
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