Week 4

Pina

The fourth week of video diaries two started with some homework and learning material on how creating another effects on after effect. The second lecture starts with a documenter movie in title ‘Pina.’ It is a one and half hour documentary which is about dancing and Pina. Hereby, I will write my review of this week and what I have learned so far.

The first lecturing was about after effect’s effect. So we were shown an effect that we can do by using a depth image we can find. Since there is not much time left during the lecturing hours, we were asked to bring the material that have been masked and done for the next meeting. The other is we were shown how to move or animate a character that almost look the same as we did in adobe flash in the previous semester. But the difference is the after effect does not require a bone tool, yet we can attach skeleton on the character instead. I have learn this by myself during last semester and found this one is basically amazing since the movement is smooth enough and image feel less sharper than in the flash. So, I order to learn this technique, we have to bring our characters that have been chopped down for some parts in the next meeting.

The lab hour section on Wednesday was about previewing Pina’s documentary video. The video is about dancing documentary that talking about Pina. The former dancer of the video who passed away few years ago. The documentary is a tribute for Pina. We can see it since most of the people involved in the documentary were using blacks and recall everything they remember about Pina. The documentary was set with no specific narrative of narrator lining the story. However, almost of the person included in the documentary was giving their memory of Pina during her lifetime. Some parts showed how strong is Pina to teach the other, some parts showed how Pina passion through the dancing world. She is like a goddess to all these people.

The technical issues that I really curious are how the camera could capture the dancing in the real stage. I am curious of knowing how the cameraman could capture the image of face image during the live stage performance. Does not it disturb the audience when they were watching, the cameraman have to capture the front view image? The other issue is does Pina shown in the documentary? I do not know her face, but some scene showed her in still good shape. However, does the dancing using Pina as the dancer or not. I am concern of this, does the documentary all fully documented after her death? And if so, were the scene that shown her dancing was shot before her death?

Many question I do have in my mind after watching the movie. The way the camera movement and the passionate the actor/person of the documentary is really high. The dancers are really strong and through their dance I could feel sorry and happiness at the time being. Pina’s could be the best dancer for them, she motivated them as they said.  At the end, I still have many questions that I need to solve by myself. This documentary is an awesome documentary that I ever watch.