Following my meeting with Andrew, the purpose of this week was to thoroughly plan out my 30minute piece as best as I could, however, I couldn't do that without playing with the drone and investigating its natural functions. It took me a couple of days to get accustomed to controlling the drone, (in other words, I crashed it many, many times) but after a while as all things do it became slightly easier.
This being said, I've decided upon 6 sections, each lasting about 5 minutes. The sections are as follows:
1. Opening film
The purpose of the opening film is not only to set the scene for the performance thats about to happen but it also means that the drone is required to fly live for a less amount of time. It was obvious from the start that the battery levels for the drone would be an issue, as a large battery allows for roughly 20minutes flying time, whereas the regular battery allows for roughly 12minutes. Considering my piece needs to be 30minutes long, an opening film was decided upon. The opening film will also be filmed from the drone's perspective, as seen in the video above, as it creates a nice aesthetic for the viewer. In this instance also, referring back to Ben Spatz from my previous blog post, the drone becomes the Videographer and the Director, deciding what it wants to film by deciding where to fly, and I remain as the Practitioner, presenting the idea to the Director.
2. Territory
My idea for this section is for the drone to appear to be literally marking its own territory, the stage is it's domain, and therefore when I enter the stage it sees me as a possible intruder. This hopefully will demonstrate how usually the theatre and the stage are usually largely dominated by a human presence however more frequently nowadays technology is making its home on stage.
3. Head to Head
Following on from the previous section, I envision that myself and the drone will scope each other out, much like two wild animals would before fighting. In order to portray this I hope for the movement vocabulary to be on a low level, quite slow and animalistic with the drone very close to my face the entire time. The head to head idea has also been inspired by contact improvisation techniques, in which usually two humans come to contact for the first time via their foreheads touching, and gradually find ways to move together. Similarly here, the drone and I are discovering ways in which we can move together.
4. Birds Eye View
Here I want the drone to use its advantage of height by looming above me, just out of my reach. As the drone has a secondary camera to film a bird's eye view I may also experiment and see what the movement looks like from above and perhaps include some footage of that within my piece. I also want to include some movement phrases where it seems as though the drone is controlling me from above, pulling me in different directions around the stage, using fall and release in my movement vocabulary.
5. Dodging
This is where I want the drone to take over the stage, flying round and round at quite a fast pace, perhaps causing me to quickly dive or jump out of its path, investigating how far the drone can challenge me, visibly showing how exhausting it is for me.
6. Fading
After the drone has rapidly picked up energy in the previous section, and imagining that it's battery level is next to nothing, the drone here will begin to slow down as if it is becoming weaker. I plan to interact with the drone as if I'm trying to encourage it to keep going and keep flying, using the depleted battery level to my advantage, and the drone may possible lose all energy completely and die out in my hand, therefore signalling a clear end to my piece.
These sections all sound quite interesting and exciting, but whether or not its possible for the drone to perform how I envision it will is a completely different story. I already get the feeling I may be being too ambitious but only time will tell. Unfortunately Andrew cancelled our meeting for the end of this week so I'll have to wait until Tuesday to see whether this is all possible.
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