Visual Outcome Reflection: On feasibility

I've been thinking a lot about how feasible this method is for reviewing. It's taken me so long to get this far with storyboards. I don't see how a critic with deadlines would have the time to put something like this together if he/she had to adhere to a news deadline of one or two days after. And no disrespect to anyone, but these critics are a bit older...and very clearly writers. Only writers. Even the content of their writing suggests they stick with exactly what they know: reviews, previews, ballet features or profiles on ballet dancers. They rarely write articles about how ballet intersects with other disciplines. But maybe that's what ballet criticism needs: a few people who are interested in taking the time to explore that. It's a grim thought, but Judith Mackrell of The Guardian won't be at it forever. Someone else will have to step in, hopefully with new ideas.

I recently spoke with Emilia and Linda, the founders of The Ballet Bag, a website devoted to being enthusiastic and informative (in a friendly, open way) about ballet. They don't call themselves critics, but they had a lot of great insight on how ballet criticism works right now. I told them about my idea of wanting more out of a review — how a review could look beyond a performance. And they said it's just a difficult thing to convey in the very limited space that review-writers have. The editorial side of the publications have expectations (even if they are dated) about what a review should look like, and these writers have to adhere to that. The comments sections of reviews (at least on the Guardian and Observer) are where The Ballet Bag ladies say reviews can really take shape, or re-shape. Many times, it will give critics the opportunity to dive deeper into issues they wanted to cover. Mostly, though, I've found that the commenters on Luke Jennings' and Judith Mackrell's reviews either very much agree with everything either reviewer says, or the commenters have absolutely no clue what criticism is anyway (this seems to be a problem with comments sections in general). You have very little opportunity for coherent development of thought. And in the case of these ballet reviews, commenters function as faithful defenders of the writers.

Going back to how writers must adhere to the needs of a publication got me thinking about the piece that I submitted to the Guardian a while back. Judith Mackrell really liked it, but she said it was too literary. I was caught off-guard because I thought my writing about ballet very clearly made good links between ballet and other disciplines, and fairly (in understandable language) explained where ballet stood in current popular culture. And I worked to spell out how ballet had appeared in many different arenas so that more readers might be included. Being told the piece was too literary (okay, maybe it was a different writing style than The Guardian usually prints) made me wonder about the content of the actual reviews. I mean, have you read them? Okay, you probably haven't. But some of the descriptions are just loaded with unreadable or nonsensical or 'flowery' phrases. Take this sentence from a Royal Ballet Triple Bill Review of Ballo della Regina by Luke Jennings:

Nuñez, ravishing in shell-pink chiffon, makes light of the often counterintuitive text, springing on to pointe from steely air-turns, drawing bowstring-taut arabesques out of en dedans pirouettes, and launching into flying, up-tucked pas de chat.

As someone who goes to the ballet, I can understand the want? need? to be specific about steps, but is this how you attract an audience? Is this how you gain readers? I really don't even know what 'en dedans pirouettes' are. And this is in the second paragraph. How about making me feel a little bit more included? If you really want to go there, this feels awfully 'literary' to me.

Anyway, besides the challenge of actually making the film, I wondered about the feasibility of a film-as-review appearing somewhere like The Guardian or Observer. I'm trying to bring in 'fun' or relevant aspects of popular culture — recognizable quotes or images that people can relate to. But that also raises a problem within print journalism: Is using content to create new content plagiarism? In this case, I don't think so because I'll be including a list of references at the end of the film, but the content will not be attributed as the film plays. And if it's on youtube, I say it's fair game. But even thought I'm trying to bring in aspects of popular culture (to the film), would a film be too avant-garde for a publication? How clear do you have to be to reach a section of the mainstream...but still be interesting?

Visual Outcome Reflection: Visualizing, Part 1

I've written the review, but now it's time to get beyond the words. In my tutorial, Teal and Anna were interested in the fact that the process towards a final visual outcome began with words. The review was text-based. And well, so is this. But it's definitely a step in a more uncomfortable direction for me. I mean, I rarely make webs...unless I'm being forced to make a web for class. But! I thought it would be helpful to start thinking beyond how Romeo & Juliet looks on paper and explore how I might convey the experience and my opinion on film. I'm pretty lost. I was hoping that I would have enough original footage, but I don't feel like I do. It seems like a good opportunity to use content to build new content. I've been reading that, with dance, everything generated comes from something that exists already. Expanding that content-from-content idea in the form of a review might lead to some interesting juxtapositions with other elements of popular culture. In my written review, I say something like...."It's as if the Royal Ballet is too embarrassed to bring their girlfriend (the audience) home to meet their mother (the Royal Opera House), so they bring them to the O2." I've been wondering about a moment from a RomCom that might work to convey that within the film, which is kind of fun.

I've also been reviewing some of the coverage that I filmed before the event. Two of the dancers were on This Morning, and there were a few gems I could use within that. The trailers released by the Royal Ballet before the performance weekend really stand out too: "World's Greatest Ballet Company. World's Greatest Love Story. World's Greatest Arena." I think this will be a repeated element that I'd like to manipulate to show convey this idea of: If you tell us, we'll come. Tell us you're awesome, and we'll come! *

In the first image (with 'Set Up The Scene' at the top), I was trying to think about what visuals I could use at the beginning of the film, but I think I can do only so much setting up the scene. Normally written reviews spend a good paragraph setting things up. I feel like I can convey the scene throughout the film, especially if I repeat a few certain images (the main trailer itself, the lone hotdog stand underneath the Romeo & Juliet trailer advert and this awesome footage of zillions of sheep being herded come to mind). Maybe it's better — and clearer — to just get straight to the point.

I've found that thinking about what the film might sound like is helping me craft a story arc. I've been listening to my footage, and thinking about music and sound effects. For some reason, that comes across strongly to me. It feels more natural to put together a story from sounds first. We'll see what happens.

* Which reminds me! An aside about Love Da Pop: They chose popcorn because it was cheap and they could afford to take a risk with that. And then to build up a client base, they told everyone (and by everyone I mean every adorable cinema and also BAFTA) that they had this fantastic popcorn in beautifully designed packaging. They didn't have any of that. By the time they had gotten their first popcorn-making gig, they hadn't developed a flavor and they didn't have packaging at all. Quickly, they popped like 3,000 servings of popcorn and salt-and-peppered it (their first "gourmet" flavor). They they bought a bunch of toothpicks, a stamp and some striped bags and sold the popcorn in those. They handed over the packages at the event. They knew it looked kinda shitty and not "beautifully designed," but they didn't apologize for it and they were as confident as can be about it. People ate it up. In a way, I guess you could see this as being a little sleazy, but I guess I see it as using the ingredients you have and know to make something you've never tried before. Just do it. And don't apologize for it. If you have confidence that this is an awesome thing people need to know, then they'll believe you. They just need to be told.

Visual Outcome Reflection: First Drafts

There was no real thought behind starting the visual outcome by actually writing a review. It didn't strike me as odd. It just seemed like the natural first step in my making process. I'm not a terribly visual person when it comes to the first stages of storytelling. I usually don't make webs or big brainstorm charts. I take a lot of notes, and I look at my notes. I take some more notes. And I type on my computer. That's about it, usually. I knew that writing about Romeo & Juliet first would help me clear my head. It was a way of purging a bunch of shitty ideas. I can handle shitty ideas in writing. I didn't know if I could kill bad ideas as easily once they were in an animatic or placed in the film. As Anne Lamott says, I saw my written reviews as my "shitty first drafts" of my film. They weren't separate. These writings, somehow, would become...unwritings? Or something?

Knowing that writers don't have tons of time to write a review after a performance, I thought it would be good to just practice the act of writing a review. And in retrospect, I suppose I wanted to test one half of my idea before going further: I wanted to use the review of Romeo & Juliet as a way in to write about another issue. In this case, I wanted to use the opportunity to address the technology of the performance and the marketing of the ballet as an event. A question I tried to answer throughout the written review was, why this advertising now? Why not use advertising for the performances at the Royal Opera House?

As I wrote notes and formed outlines, I tried to pay attention to a couple of ideas because I knew they would play out later in the visual outcome:

1. What you leave out is as important as what you leave in. There was a lot of stuff I wanted to say, especially because I was enraged that the Royal Opera House could charge me 50 pounds to come to North Greenwich and watch a screen. I wanted to talk about how brilliant Alina Cojocaru was when I could actually make out her tiny body on stage, and I wanted to write about how impossible it was to enjoy her dancing because the giant screens were so distracting. All we saw were faces and upper bodies. It was suddenly like silent theatre. I wanted to write that the Royal Ballet has the wrong idea of what their 'new, young audience' wants (we don't want a mass experience; we want to feel like insiders). I wanted to say that none of what I'm writing matters because once the tens of thousands showed up and planted themselves in their seats, the ballet would be dubbed a success. In this case, I felt it really was pointless to write about what happened on stage. However, I knew that most of what I was writing wouldn't show up in the visual outcome. At one point, I didn't think any of the actual words I had written would be a part of it.

2. Which brings me to the need to sum it up. Throughout the writing process, I became more and more conscious that my writing would need to be fairly simple — simple, clear ideas — so that I could make it even more clear for a visual outcome (that might not even use my ownwriting to direct it). And after getting through quite a number of drafts (I made new drafts to rearrange, to cut and to add. Each one was a development from the next; not a complete revision), I was able to sum up my review fairly concisely:

1. The self-proclaimed "world's greatest ballet company" was performing in the world's "greatest arena."

2. Did it work?

3a. No.

3b. We were drawn to the screens like flies to light

3c. We had come to a performance to experience it through filters.

3d. Whatever happened on-stage was the supplemental lip-synch of the real deal.

4. The success of the 'experiment' was in the marketing. Where was this marketing in other RB productions? Why isn't it being used to bring audiences to the Royal Opera House (When you got it, flaunt it)?

5a. If you're trying to reach a new young audience, you have to make them feel special; not one of the crowd.

So after zooming in to write about 800 words, I zoomed way out to whittle my argument down to a few points. This became the next working draft of the visual outcome.

Video interviews for music blogs and bird poop

Email to K. Maletsky:

"just watched your videos from midwest mayhem. bravo! it was almost uncomfortable to watch people try to find some words to talk, which makes me think that this is a really good method to explore. it's so funny because i was going to try something similar at the ballet on thursday evening. i hope you do more of this!"

These films of fans at a concert are kind of strange. Everyone looks surprised that a music critic would be asking for their opinion. Or maybe, everyone is just surprised to be asked for an opinion? Whatever the case, I thought the experimentation of video was interesting. It's something I've been wanting to try. I don't know where the critic's voice is (well, it's there...I hear Kiernan), but I like the idea of using something else to document the show. Could it be done critically? I love that film was used here, at a rock concert. Because these venues are so much more about the environment and everyone else...it's not just about the band. It's about everything. I think it's important that a critic try to capture that. I've been wondering about the point of a one-off ballet performance. But what about music shows, where a lot of bands play the same set list over and over again? And most of the live, played music gets compared to the mastered recordings. That seems backwards. Why not focus on something else?

Alt-weeklies are interesting places to look for strange bits of criticism. I actually thought the RiverFront Times' coverage of last years' Kings of Leon concert was a great example of looking outside of the performance.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/rftmusic/2010/07/kings_of_leon_cancels_st_louis_show_pigeon_bird_shit_july_23_2010_jared_followill_missouri_heat.php

The band canceled because apparently a pigeon pooped on the lead singer's head after performing three songs. And the article that came out of the performance, I think qualifies as a review. It talks about what happened and really investigates the story too. Turns out, a year later, the pigeon episode was actually, well, a load of crap. The RFT revisited the performance and fiasco after more information surfaced this year. Even though the performance in St. Louis happened more than a year before, I'd still consider this piece of writing the review:

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/rftmusic/2011/08/kings_of_leon_pigeon_gate_dallas.php

Dancing intertexts: The Rub

XV

In this respect dance is in a similar position to all the other arts, sharing their reliance upon verbal and written languages while establishing their own distinctive modes of communication, whether in sound, paint, light or words.

Why must the reliance be on the verbal and written? If these artforms are communicating and constructing meaning beyond the verbal, the reviews should be too.

Dancing Intertexts...more

19

“The reality of interpretation is that readers enter at different points, select points of interest and, most usually, enter from an interpretative or evaluative stance. The reader then selects (chooses) those ‘facts’ which support that perspective. In this sense, the reader constructs the dance. Eco refers to this as the ‘continuous coming and going’ of interpretation (1979:5)”

————

This choosing of facts works similarly to the comments section of the Guardian, or how people react to comments on Twitter. Maybe some of the commenters on the Guardian are looking for points that Luke Jennings makes that align with their own views/perceptions of the performance. An entry point could also be what is missing from the written piece. For me, my entry point was noticing that very little review space was given to Romeo & Juliet. I wanted to know why.

Every reader is coming into the piece from a different history or perspective:

Ballet is boring / Romeo & Juliet is my favorite / I’ve seen every ballet ever / I know all about ballet / I know nothing about ballet

Is it a critic’s job to think about all of those different points of entry? Is it a critic’s job to maximize the amount of perspectives that can enter a piece? By changing the form of how that piece is ‘written,’ how does the critic change the opportunity for new and old perspectives to interact with the piece?

In other words, how would a filmed review create more or different entry points than a written one?

I guess I could answer this question: A filmed review would allow for new points of entry because of how the information is being communicated. A written piece could explain what the dancers looked like on stage, down to the very last detail. With a filmed piece, you have to be more creative with how you address how dancers performed because simply filming the dancers doesn't give an idea of your opinion of their performance. You have to find ways to make visual comparisons, using other types of film — stock footage, vintage footage, footage you create yourself — and cutting techniques. While any dance critic/writer can write that the ballerina danced quickly and accurately, how in the world do you say that in an image? Suddenly, a world of visual metaphors has opened up to me. Maybe "quickly and accurately" looks like lightning striking a single post.

Also, a filmed review is a great opportunity to step away from description. And while it's been common for me to come across reviews with a lot of description and not much of an opinion, I think a filmed review of the ballet would be impossible to make if the opinion wasn't carried through straight from the beginning. Rather than describing what it looked liked, a film lets you skip the subtleties and say exactly why it did or didn't work.

Because I'm sourcing film from other contexts (movies, home videos, original footage I've made) it's a natural next step to review that ballet through different lenses than just what happened on-stage. Making a film allows me to think beyond the stage. I can't film the performance anyway, so I have to use the ballet as an opportunity to speak critically about something else within that performance.

Immediately after seeing Romeo & Juliet, I knew it didn't work, and I started thinking about how I could capture why it didn't work on film:

1. The dancers were so far away and tiny on the gigantic stage that the live nuances were impossible to catch — Perhaps I could blur the dancing?

2. The stage was so big that the half-jog/runs to catch up with the music were quite apparent — Maybe I could use footage of football players running up and down the field

3. The screens were giant and distracting, and they forced me to watch the ballet in high definition 2D. I couldn't look away — Could I use footage of bugs flying into light? A cat distracted by the television? A trainwreck you just have to watch?

And in this way I was actually describing. But I wasn't describing just what I saw, but how I saw it. And the how part of the description was what I saw as the opinion.

I was also thinking a lot about my conversation way back when with Jennifer Homans, who said I wouldn't have the opportunity to flip-flop on what worked and what didn't work. My film had to be one way or the other, or it would be confusing for the viewer. I agreed with her until I realized that there was one big part of the Romeo & Juliet performance that did work: the marketing. The marketing was the reason why critics called it a 'success.' You didn't have to have an opinion at all to see that the ballet had made big bucks: an arena was full of people, and in a way, it didn't matter whether or not the performance was a good one, because people had paid to be there and the seats were filled.

This was something I wanted to address in the film. And I thought that looking at what didn't work (the performance itself) and what did (what got people to the performance) was a perfect chance to use the review to do what I've been wanting: To use the performance as a way in to talk about something else. Yes, okay. I do talk about what happened on stage and why it didn't work, but then I give my big But! and say what did work. So for me, this filmed review is critical on a couple of different levels: I have an opinion about the on-stage performance and I also have an opinion on a different part of the performance: the marketing of it.

Dancing Intertexts

Page 18

John Frow…refers to the identification of an intertext as an act of interpretation in itself, and therefore as a discursive structure rather than a ‘source.’ He suggests that understanding the discursive structure is of greater significance than understanding the ‘facts,’ just as “detailed scholarly information is less important than the ability to reconstruct the cultural codes which are realized (and contested in texts).

This works with the function of review. The function of a review is really no longer meant to describe; it should be linking bigger, cultural ideas so the audience can interpret/infer the meaning of a performance. And not necessarily what that performance meant in an artistic sense, but what did that performance mean from a historical standpoint? Or from an economic one? Or from a technological standpoint? Or from an audience perspective?