Bowie Bits

One of our first major productions was titled 'Bowie Bits' it was where we had to make a video featuring David Bowie.

We decided on doing it to the song 'Let's Dance' realised by David Bowie in his album titled 'Let's Dance' released in 1983. Our idea was to do it in a disco dancing theme using the “Thin White Duke Paper Doll Cutout” given to us. We decided that the costumes we would use were the ones which symbolised 80s style the best and ones that they would have been worn when dancing, one of the costumes that we used was a union jack jumpsuit. The animation had to link to the song which is why we came up with this idea.

David Bowie's 'Let's Dance' 

We had a camera, tripod and a cardboard box. We put the tripod upside down with the camera attached and then put the box against the wall. The idea was that we would have black paper stuck to the back of the box so it would look like a disco night. We made a disco ball out of wire and paper as we were trying to make it round and as close to a ball as possible- although it didn't turn out very round. I then attached it to the top of the box and hand it hanging down so it looked like an actual disco ball. We also had different colours of paper to use them as coloured lights which lined up against the back. We had two David Bowie's and made them stand up in different costumes with an audience sat in front of them as though they were watching them dance.

We moved them to make it look as though they were dancing and each shot had a different movement. We also took the photos from different angles to make it look as though they were dancing more freely. We cut off limbs and then re-stuck it on so they could change shape. I took a majority of the photos because I felt like that what I was best doing.

We didn't manage to take that many photos because they were getting moved after every shot and therefore didn't have enough time. In total I think that we managed to take 76 photos. We then edited it on Premiere Pro using 3 bars per second this way it sped it up to make it look more like an animation which was the task.

Our video got lost on the computer system as we managed to not save it properly but I think that this was part of the learning process now we know what we are doing now we all now know how to export it so next time it won't get lost.

I don't think that it was particular successful because the film only lasted for 8 seconds but I think if I was to do it again then a lot more shots would need to be taken in order for it to be successful and to last the minimum of thirty seconds. I do however think that this was a great learning curve and I think that I learnt a lot from this project purely due to the lack of success we had.