Swimming The List by Susie Lee

As I wrote about in an earlier post I had the chance to shoot some dance recently. The project was for Susie Lee and was a real blast. It was the first time working with artists that controlled the light in such a way as to make the light itself a character in the dance. Visual Artist Keeara Rhoades played the part of the light through a set of LCD projectors and some pretty cool software that allowed her to move the light in real time with Ying Zhou the dancer.

As for the cinematography. There was little time for me to shoot before during rehearsal due to logistics. Which meant most of the shooting was done the day before and right after the final performance. The time we spent shooting during the dress rehearsal meant that lighting cues were still being worked out as well as light intensity and colors. We would start to shoot Ying and midway through a shot the light would go from blue to orange. Or, it would drop in intensity all of a sudden. This meant that as I would watch the footage it was all a jumble of mixed light.

Since B&W is immune to color temperature changes…Voila! Make it B&W! Another thing about dropping the color was the editor Ian Louthan was able to boost the contrast and bring some solidity back to the moving light. On a down note going B&W did lead to some noise in a couple shots which is never fun.

In the end it all came together to make a film that is something that captures the essence of the piece and became a whole new stand alone piece too. Everyone was great to work with and I really hope to work with everyone that was part of this project again soon.