Kayla LaPoure Josiah Morgan Lanie Allen Ciera Carlson and Molly Farrington | 12/10/2021
Formations is a collaborative live performance based project. Our visual designers, sound designer, and choreographers have come together to create a unique and immersive experience. This project uses a geode like cave tailing the line of fantasy and reality as a stage to highlight a ritualistic narrative dance and soundscape. Our environment includes lush foliage engulfing the cave, and luminescent crystals that respond to the dancers movement. The soundscape includes a beautiful orchestral-like experience that also responds to the dance. The sound and visuals are truly brought to life through the movement and placement in space of the dancers. Their movements start out in dissonance as they move asynchronously. The narrative and viewer are pushed forward as the dancers synchronize into a ritualistic dance. In the climax, the dancers will move together. To continue the experience, the characters dance individually again. Their movements are in response to each other over the discovery of each other in this experience. Overall, everything points to the moment and the movement of the dancers.
Each member of our group started out making individual mood boards of different visuals and sounds. We took elements we enjoyed and added them to one space as a master mood board. After understanding the visuals, we created storyboards for different camera shots, ideas, and placement of assets. Solidifying that, we created the environment in 3D space in Unreal Engine 5. With the space created we looked at different inspirations for the avatars and went through several iterations of those. The avatars blending into the environment was an obstacle we worked through. Through key lights we helped the avatars and thus the dancers stand out. While the visuals were coming together, Josiah worked on the sound scape. He broke down different songs and picked different elements he enjoyed. He then created blueprints to make the sounds intractable with movement. Finally, the dancers took in the ideas, sounds, and visuals we presented and threaded a narrative that draws the viewer through the experience.
