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In the beginning we all wanted to create something in regards to women empowerment incorporating light as a main theme. After much discussion and merging of many ideas, we had decided on an initial plan and vision for our project. In our first draft, we had wanted to portray the journey of a women through different stages of life, starting with birth into childhood, adolescence, adulthood and finally the future.

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To depict the stage of birth, we initially wanted to use natural lighting, such as sun beams breaking through leaves on a tree and the sound of birds singing, as a symbolism for innocence and peace. We also had the idea of incorporating our own childhood videos, and projecting them onto a blank surface, while we danced one by one in front of the videos using the light from the projector to connect the stage of birth to childhood.

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With the second act of our project, childhood, we wanted to up the tempo of the music, to portray the chaos and liveliness of a child. In regards to the choreography we wanted to use movements that were childlike, and to portray the fact that children are oblivious to the world with their innocence still intact.

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Within the third act, adolescence, the depiction of the first hit of reality within a woman's life would be shown through a drop in mood and atmosphere. Using a heavier beat and sound within the music, we hoped this would portray the multiple high intensity emotions that a teenager would be going through in this stage of her life. we had also wanted to change our costumes for this act, into slightly darker, textured and layered clothes to depict the multiple layers of struggles in an adolescences life.

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In comparison to act 2, we wanted to create a contrasting view of the world through a child's lens, of how sexism is deeply rooted throughout the life of a woman since their birth. Also to depict the harsh reality that we face as we cross the threshold into adulthood. An initial thought we had with this act was to incorporate some harsh aspects of living as a woman, such as never being truly safe. To depict this, we were going to include snippets of a stalker following a woman home on a dark night through a dimly lit alley.

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For the final act, the future, it was important to us to show how strong a woman could truly be. Through the choreography, we wanted to portray the fact that we aren't accepting this harsh reality towards women, and that we are determined to make the world our own. We discussed about inviting a considerable amount of female identifying dancers to show comradery and that there are strength in numbers. And finally using the light from our childhood videos to reflect onto the future leaving the video with an open ending to show that our fight is not over.

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Costume Designer journey and development

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Costume Designer journey and development

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I took on the role of costume designer as I thought clothing would serve as an effective way to further enhance the meaning and narrative of our piece. Initially I was inspired by the use of lighting and how it effects and distorts certain colours through our perception. I had concocted the idea of using a muted colour palate that could be easily manipulated under the effects and colours of different lightings, with the intention of transforming the costumes within the different stages of our piece to represent the meanings and emotions without necessarily changing costumes.

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After receiving the music from our Sound Editor Holly, as well as the choreography from our Choreographer Hannah, I now had a good base to be able to move forward with the costumes in further detail. Being able to listen to the music in addition to watching and learning the choreography I had a better understanding of which style and colour of clothing would suit certain aspects of the routine. Within the soundtrack that we would be using, there were two very contrasting styles of music, therefore I had to scrap my initial idea of using the same costume throughout the routine as it simply would not work. Instead, I considered using loose clothing for the first half correlating with the lyrical feel of the music, and using more street style clothing for the commercial/hip-hop music in the second half, while maintaining the same colour theme throughout.

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Mark Morris's 'L'Allegro, II Penseroso ed il Moderato' (2014)

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Hofesh Shechter Company: Political Mother (2012)

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Dancer - Liane Aung

Photographer - Allina Yang

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As we were coming to a conclusion for our final production concept, I had realised that using multiple lighting effects and colours wasn't practical as we were limited to what we had available to us. Therefore I rethought on what clothing would be best for our first scene where we danced in front of a projector. I didn't want to take away the main focus, which was the childhood videos, with flashy clothes, thus I decided on the use of black clothing which would blend into the background. For the final verdict of the colour palate, I had decided on the use of warm muted colours i.e., shades of orange, green, red and browns/blacks for the final dance scene. I had come to the conclusion of these colours, as I thought they best represented the emotions of rage, frustration, and defiance that this final scene sought to portray.

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We had officially started our production process by meeting up after our classes to learn the choreography. This part of the process went rather smoothly as we had learned the choreography within the first few hours, which overall hastened the process and allowed us to promptly move forward with the filming process. There weren't any overall issues that were raised during this part, except for the occasional discussion on how to adapt the choreography for the camera.

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We had managed to fit the whole filming process into one evening. We decided that it would be best to film the outside dance scene first as we didn't want it getting too dark. Pia and Hannah had searched and located a filming spot before hand, which meant we didn't have to discuss or worry about where to film on the day. We made a start by filming our individual dance parts first, while Pia, our director and editor, made sure that we all started in the same spot so that when it came to editing the clips together it would be more or less seamless. Madison, our lighting designer, had to dabble a few time adjusting the light settings as it wasn't looking quite right on video, we finally sorted it out and could carry on with filming. As we moved on to film the group piece we faced many issues regarding the videography. We were finding it difficult to filter in one by one into shot smoothly, so we had to adjust and manoeuvre the camera as best we could in the space we had. After many attempts we eventually had the final shot, which was luckily as it had just started to rain.

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For the projector we needed a room that either had a projection screen or a blank wall, thus we were set on using the seminar room. Unfortunately we spent longer than we had thought filming outside, so by the time we arrived back at Artsdepot the seminar room had shut. We went round the building searching for a suitable room and thankfully AD 32 was unoccupied. Hurriedly, we started to get the set-up and room ready so we could start filming as soon as possible. As soon as the projector and camera were up and ready, we went up one by one to do roughly a 45 second improv in front of the screen. The process ultimately for this final part went smoothly without any issues, and as soon as everyone had filmed their individual parts we drew things to a close.

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Madison Watson-Benton - Lighting Designer, Dancer

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Pia-Llewella Jones - Director, Editor, Videographer, Dancer

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Beth Roberts (Me) - Costume Designer, Dancer

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The process on a whole went better than expected, and I'm quite proud of everyone and how well we all worked together to make sure the production was the best it could be. There weren't any major issued that occurred only minor issues that have already been highlighted and were easily resolved.