1920's Mime and Circus Dance

Keywords

• Silence
• Black and white
• Film noir
• Expressionism

Black and white is a key feature of a mime, the expressions on their faces are even made in black and white.
Mime also incorperates fashion from the period that isn't used in the mainstream today, including silk gloves, braces, hats and high waisted trousers.

Female mimes are usually portrayed in a much more sexual way, usually with stockings, long silk gloves and often a belt or corset to give them an hourglass shape.
Sometimes red lipstick is used to make the female mime more sexual.

Traditionally a mime will wear black brogue style shoes with laces, however a female mime is usually portrayed nowadays as wearing some sort of high heel, usually in a red colour.
A female mime will usually accesorize with other red 'matching' items.

The mime is based heavily on french coulture and fashion. You can see this from the beret hat, striped artists t-shirt, braces and brogue lace up shoes. Maybe a french style music piece would go best with this dance style?

Dancing through the ages

Our story will be set during the 1920's, and will ultimately end in the 2000's. What we would like to do is use dance and costume to take the audience through each decade from the 20's until now. As the time progresses, so does the quality of the footage, the modernisation of the costumes and the style of dance.

The area's of each decade we would like to explore are:

1920's Mime and circus dance
1930's Flapper girl
1940's Wartime
1950's Marilyn Monroe and 50's Hollywood
1960's Rock n' Roll 'Grease'
1970's Hippie Abba
1980's Glam Rock
1990's Spice Girls/Britney Girlband
2000's Step up 2 Grime dance

Group Proposal

Digital Media Foundations Group Proposal

 CONCEPT

* Idea:Our idea is  to produce a screen based stop motion short film, which incorperates a circus theme. In addition to this circus concept, there will be a big focus on using vintage, black and white and sepia photography to shoot this.

* Inspiration/ Motivation: We have taken inspiration from a number of different sources, but focused primarily on the opening sequence of the film “Moulin Rouge”. Alongside this, we researched vintage photography using blogging sites such as Tumblr. It was these ‘dark’ shots that inspired us to pick our theme. The first

Target Audience: Our concept is set to appeal to both teenagers and adults.   

           

Suitability to Target Audience:

* No use of strong language with little or no sexual content

PROJECT REQUIREMENT

* Equipment: Computer, Camera, Tripod,

* Software:  Photoshop, Flash, Premier Pro

* Location: Outdoor and Indoor space

* Others: Actors and production crew such as a director, Makeup artist, costumier among   others.

Project Timeline: 6 to 8 weeks

* Week six: Researching, looking for locations

* Week seven: Shooting, putting together background sound

* Week eight and nine: Selecting shots, creating backdrop images and editing

* Week ten: For individual evaluation (no group work this week)

* Week eleven: Project Presentation.

* Week twelve: Completion of Project.

Product Description: We will be producing a 1-3 minute short film, which will be constructed using stop motion animation. We wanted to give the film a dark and more thoughtful undertone, so it was decided that the best way to portray this feeling was through using black and white or sepia, vintage style photography/filming. We all thought that giving the film a less polished look would give the piece an aged feel.

Alongside this, we are going to use music, rather than dialogue to set the mood within the story, and explain the different feelings throughout the film. It will also portray the characters and the moods that they want to convey. We want to use classical and dramatic music in addition to the visuals to make this a success.

The story will contain text pop ups which make the story more interactive. This text will have a gothic or aged feel, which will match with the concept of the narrative. These bites of text will pop up during the character's performance, and in between it, to give the audience some brief information about the situation occurring in the film.

We want to use a linear narrative to portray the story, and we wanted the story to build and progress throughout the time we are given. We also want to make light of Todorov’s equilibrium theory, where the story begins, a problem or issue occurs and then the story goes back to the way it was before.

We would also like to incorporate Propp’s character theory into the short film, by adding certain characters that are typical of his theory, and the genre we want to create. These characters will be similar to “The Princess” and “The Hero” and give the story a generic narrative feel.

International Property Laws

There are many examples of infringement of copyright within the entertainment industry, especially with a rise in illegal downloads and pirate copies of films, music and art.

There are many types of 'International Property' and some are hard and some are soft form of liscenses.

- Patents - are scientific or inventive types of protection. This protects technical features and processes within the science and development industry. This is hard form of liscence, which is usually applicable for 10 years, it is a more solid form of copyrighting.
- Copyright -

Vintage Photography Editing

Original image

Halftone Texture and Black and White Hue

Film Grain and Black and White Hue.

Sepia Tone.

Costumes and Makeup

Our piece will focus primarily on the use of costume and face paint, colours are not so important in the piece as it will be of a sepia tone or black and white hue, however shades will matter.

Using simple black and white face paint can show the emotions of a mime.

Tears, lines and curves are used to show emotion on the face.

Facial expressions are used and the makeup enhances these expressions.

Story Ideas

It is essential that our project has a clear and structured narrative. Therefore the best way to incoperate this is through having a story line.

I have been trying to come up with ideas so that I can start the groups storyboard, and so far have personally come up with a few ideas:

Idea 1: The idea of the very vintage mime, contrasted with some very modern comedy. I would like to present the mime in very old and aged fashion and looking like a professional. Further into the sketch, I would like to incorperate some comedy value, by making the mime a very poor one. As different characters would try to provoke silent reactions from the mime, the mime would end up talking to each one of them, as if he had forgotten to be a mime or had given up on the idea of being a mime.

The end result of the story would be with the final character (his love interest), following the same pattern the love interest would try talking to the mime, but this time he would not respond orally, and will finally acheieve his goal of becoming a professional mime by acting out his love feelings towards his love interest. Not only is the mime happy for finally becoming professional but he is also happy because he has found his love interest.

Idea 2: The next idea is based on the first, however instead of the mime meeting different people, and struggling to show his emotions, it is a mixture between modern day and vintage. The mime will be given different types of technology and modern day objects, and forced to use these different pieces of equipment. This will also add comedy value to the piece.