SIX (2014) [single-component output with contextualising information]
- Submitting institution
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Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 3401
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2014
- URL
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https://doi.org/10.17870/bathspa.c.5240456
- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Six is a 5 minute 40 second single-take screendance. It forms part of the research thesis The Dancer and the Looking Glass by Christopher Lewis-Smith in which the author explores the dancer/camera/screen viewer relationship. Filmed in Bristol, England, the film explores this relationship as one in which the camera is an active participant in the choreography. The camera follows the journey of 5 dancers across an urban space and into an art gallery, where they see and react to a large dark sculpture. The camera takes on a human
perspective in that it maintains eye level contact with the performers and their surroundings, and moves at the speed of a person, creating the possibility, through the absence of cuts in the edit, of a participant in the action.
The film illustrates the premise that for the duration of a long-take, or a whole film if it is a single-take, a film might, temporarily at least, mirror a ‘real’ continuous unfolding of time which reflects our own conscious experience and supports a connection between the original dancing/filming event and the screen viewer. Where edited film has the power to provoke sensations by re-assembling fragments of images, sounds, and perspectives in a manner that reflects qualities of events, it cannot reflect the linear nature of a conscious lived experience.
An additional aspect of the work is a moment of eye contact with the camera in the closing seconds of the film, acknowledging being observed by the sixth performer, the camera, and thus the spectator each time the film is viewed. It was officially selected at the Loikka International Dance Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
