UDEO- Inner Child Presentation

Inner Child, a Creative Collaboration of Dance and Film.

Learning objective: Creative process, Collaboration, how children can motivate, inspire and are
a catalyst for change.

Good morning, we are so happy to be with you today and share our experiences of making the
dance film, Inner Child. My name is Karen Jensen. I am a dance faculty member at BYU and a
dance filmmaker, I am also the Artistic Director of the BYU Kinnect Dance Company who are
the performers and collaborators of this film we will be discussing today.

Brianne- Im Brianne Burham. I am a BYU dance education major and this is my second year in
Kinnect. My role in this project was to provide movement possibilities and inspire the creative
process with my fellow kinnect dancers and the children involved.

Melissa- My name is Melissa Marquez, Im a BYU Film Major and I specialize in producing,
directing and I am also a ballroom dancer. Her role in this project.


(3-4 min.) Introduction of Project (karen)- How the project came to be.

Over the years, I have done many film projects. Each one has its own unique story and journey.
Today we wanted to share with you the process of of this project. This story was unique
because rather than me taking the sole role as director (aka call all the shots), this was
collaborative project where all members of the cast and crew helped shape and design every
aspect of the film. We would like to take you on our journey show you some behind the scenes.

This was a 2 day shoot, shot during May 2013, 5 locations, 12 BYU dancers and 12 children,
11 crew members, and final product was a 4 min. film.

To give you a little background about the BYU Kinnect Dance Company, we are an outreach
dance company and our mission is to Create, Perform and Teach. Over the course of a season,
we do approx. 20-25 residencies or performances in primarily elementary schools, but also
museums, communities, events and conferences. Our phrase is We are Artist Educators who
LOVE to connect dance to Everything and Everyone around us. We begin each season by
simply brainstorming and exploring danceable ideas and within about 7 weeks we create a
show that we take on our elementary school tour. this is my third year as director, and I have to
admit, at the beginning of every season I start to get the jitters and think How are we possibly
going to accomplish this. I then quickly think of the wise words from Marilyn Berrett, the founder
of and our present dance department chair.. Trust the creative process.

I repeated these words as we embarked on this film adventure. In preparations for this film, I
approached last years Kinnect Dance Company and said, I want to do a dance film, and I want
to have it portray the misson of Kinnect. -Karen

In addition, I had acquired a grant from the BYU Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration. The
Laycock center is very exciting as it encourages collaborations within the College of FIne Arts
and Communications.

Upon extending that invitation to create a film, the Kinnect members began to brainstorm. What
would we want to say? What statement could we make through dance and cinematography that
would be meaningful and get at the essence of what it is like to be a member of Kinnect?
We ended up considering how children influence us in many ways. They cause us to look at life
through a different lens, they inspire us to have fun, to let go of egos, and to be catalysts for
change. (ask audience?)

As a Kinnect group we decided we wanted to illustrate all these ideas and show life through the
eyes of a child. So HOW to do this?

(8-10 min.) Pre-Production (turn the time to Brianne and Melissa to discuss this section?)

During the pre-production phases, as a company, we started considering typical
scenarios/locations where you would find a child . Grocery Store, Dinosaur Museum, a Park,
Elevator, a Home.

The Kinnect members were then divided up into 5 groups according to location and given the
challenge to do 3 things...

1. Develop a situation or scenario where a child would be present
2. Have the child in the scenario be a catalyst for a situational change or shift
3. Accomplish this all through movement.


The dancers were given some time to work on their choreography and about 10 days before we
filmed, we met with the Melissa who produced this and the Director of Cinematography, Eric
Pasternak. The students showed a rough version of their choreography and we did some
experimentation with the camera and costuming.

Brianne---
We were given the challenge to choreograph a dance in an elevator as if no one was watching. Once
in the elevator with some funky music movement began to flow. After that all we knew was that we
needed to incorporate children in at some point.

Here are some video clips of our rehearsal process:

Kyla and Dalan were the romantic couple at the park. - As Kinnect members, we were used to the
creative process, but adding the camera to rehearsal added an element of awkwardness.

(Show Video)

-You can see that they were working through their choreography and getting used to their romantic
role.

This next video, features Josh who was given the assignment to choreograph for a grocery store
scenario. At this point, he was exploring the idea of playing with a box of cereal

(Show Josh with cereal clip)

This is a great illustration of how what we ended with was completely different from the final
product.

Melissa --- As a producer, my job was to. With 10 days to shooting time, I had a fair
amount to accomplish. ..Time frame challenges, first thoughts, - Finding one locations and
kids in one week

How do we get kids? One of our goals was to find children that looked like younger
versions of the Kinnect members or mini-mes, to help enhance the idea of the inner
child. Karen ended up rounding up her neighborhood as well as seeking out children of
dancers here. such as Amy Markgraf-Jacobsons son, Angela Challis daughter, and Sean
Guymans son.

(12-15 min. )Production

Moving into the production phase, day one of shooting involved the grocery store and elevator
scenes and day two, was the park, dino museum and the sleepover scene.

Due to time limitations and the fact we were still in the midst of our daily residencies during May,
we were not able to actually meet with the children until the day of shooting, so with each scene,
we met the children and taught them choreography about a hour to an hour and a half before
before we began shooting. Some sections were more extensive and others were limited to just
the childrens reactions.

Elevator/ Brianne
When we shot the elevator scene, our challenges were the small space, keeping the kids
energy up, and keeping the kids from looking in the wrong direction and saying the words and
prompts. The best moments were teaching and encouraging the kids. When you get into the
groove after repeating the choreography you get a sense of what cues to call out. Just like
teaching a dance class. I really got involved with the kids.

Briannes comment: We literally got on the children's level and got into the inner child.

Heres a behind the scenes of the actual filming.

Show 2 video clips of elevator
?6685- wrong one
?6689 - Brianne and Jenny Coaching
1393 - kids moving mouths

In this Dinosaur museum, the children
(Video clip: Dino Museum ) See Tahlia and Austin and talk about them.
0516 - karen and kids
0501- washing the windows

One of my challenges was this was the first time I had done film direction with children. And I
found it got rather difficult.
Video Clip: Sleepover
1526- wide best of kids jumping - cut shorter
1528 - kids burning out - start later.

This really illustrates what happened the children in this section simply ran out of steam. This
was the youngest group and in a room with no air conditioning and after waiting hours to shoot,
by the time we filmed this section, it was nap time.

The children also provided a lot of energy and surprises on the set here is a little example
from the Park scene.
Park Video:
1:40-2:20- Jayden gets dropped

(Store- Josh and Noah) -worked really well together. Josh scrapped all of his cereal
choreography from earlier and he and Noah literally made it up on the spot. Noah was full of
ideas made so many fantastic suggestions and we actually ran with most of his ideas. maybe
45 min. to choreograph while we set up lights?
Footage of actual shoot.
1349 :40-1:35


Wrap up and transition to post

(6-8 min.) Post- Production

Trust the creative process. -Marilyn Berrett

Editing was difficult. I fortunately had a very motivated editor who was excited about the project,
Bobbi Lee. Prior to filming, we hadnt made any definite decisions on what would happen in
what order, I just we had 5 sections, and I ultimately wanted a mash up of all the sections for
the final version.

We began by editing each vignettes..lets take a look at a couple of them.

Bedroom 1:04
Elevator 1:24

One reason I wanted to show you these sections was because the children of both parts
actually did not make it into the final cut. It wasnt due to their performance but in both of these
scenarios the children are not actual characters in real time meaning in the sleepover
scene they are representing the college age girls as children, and the elevator scene they were
literally representing the inner child of the individuals in the elevator. - In other sections they are
real children, in real time.


When we presented the rough cut to a test audience, that did not read clearly and in the end,
we left the children out.

Once the vignettes were done, the next challenge was so Mash them up together. this was
really a challenge for the editor, I saw some early drafts that didnt quite work and I reached
the point of what I call Artists remorse. -Much like buyers remorse. -Wished I hadnt of done it,
saw all the errors I made, etc. Bobbie too, was having a hard time figuring out ways to mash it
up and she got to the point where she said she would try one more thing, but if it didnt work,
she would need to pass it on to another editor.

A few days later, she sent me her final cut and I nervously began to watch it. I honestly could
not have been happier! She said that after having the footage so many times and not finding
great solutions that things finally began to click, she found similar choreographic elements in the
5 sections and began to weave them together. . the words of Marilyn Berrett echoed in my
head Trust the Creative Process

Music - We worked with Caleb Blood who is a BYU Music Composition major and I basically
told him the feeling I wanted of the piece and played him examples of 2 scores I really liked, he
sent a couple of drafts and really, quite effortlessly (on my end) we had our music.

I must say it was the efforts, determination, creativity and persistence of the ENTIRE cast and
crew that made this happen. Each stage supplied its own host of challenges and problems and
this process was very Non-text book. But it worked. And I am excited to share with you the
blood, sweat, tears and laughter of the cast and crew of Inner Child.


Show Film

We have been fortunate to be able to screen the film at LDS Film Festival, BYU Contemporary
Dance Theatre concert , Winterfest, and now here. We plan to screen it at future film festivals.

(1-2) In closing
What we learned what we would do again

Each presenter say what I learned, what I would do again.

Brianne: I learned to be patient and okay with repetition. At first I expected the movement to
come off as juvinile, but as I watched the vignettes, I recognized the movement was quite
appropriate for the films message.

Q and A ( 465 ready to go).

Thanks for attending keep creating!

Quotes:

The kids helped me get into the character. talking to them and playing with them they were
the additional motivation. -Jose

When we were initially asked to Now talk and laugh with each other it felt really forced so we
made Kiki tell us funny things we started to laugh for real and it got easier. -Meagan

Using each others energy helped get you in the part because the magic happens when you're
living the part, not playing the part. for examplethe hair fix, I would do that in real life. I
would fix someones hair and I would jump in an elevator. -Jose