Hello, I'm Bill Mitchell. I'm from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I'm John and this is Tanya. I'm a digital artist.
I'm choreographer.
I'm Andy Hancock and I'm from Swansea.
Hi, my name is Sean Tewin-John and I'm a director choreographer based in Cardiff.
I'm Justin Duvall, here I'm in the Welsh countryside.
So, I'm Sandra Hans-Lacy and I'm a choreographer.
I'm Laura. I've been dancing for this film with John and Tanya.
Hi there, my name is Matt Wright. I'm here at an undisclosed wooded location somewhere in South Wales.
We're working on the production of the Submergence Trilogy which is being delivered through the Dance Stone Project.
We have an amazing group of choreographers and filmmakers currently in Wales developing the piece.
It's going to be an amazingly innovative showcase of many, many different disciplines delivered for a 360 degree cinema experience.
Just trying to imagine, just trying to visualise what it's going to be when it's in 360 degrees.
Because we shot everything square and then we're going to be compositing the dancer over the landscape.
So we can put her anywhere in the space, she can be floating around, she can be underwater, whatever we get.
We don't know what locations we're going to get, we don't know what we're going to look like.
We're shooting with fisheye lenses out here so when you're seeing it projected on the dome it fills up the space just right.
The perspective will be there and we're shooting in a forest here today in Wales.
We have shots for the sinister and for the beautiful that we're shooting at the moment.
We have a canopy of trees that are being worked with in two different locations.
In one spot we have a bit of a meadow with trees around the sides.
But at the same time it's a really interesting process because there are not that many dance films that have been made for a dance dome.
So it was quite interesting to explore the potential, what there is choreographically.
And once we started developing the concept we were quite clear early on that we wanted to work with Laura,
so you can do Chinese pole and give a very different aspect to choreography.
Because we've never worked with anything that isn't on the floor really.
So to have Laura hanging from a rope and to have her climbing up the pole is incredible.
And Laura is great because she's got this real kind of, she doesn't have to move.
And you know what she's going to do, what she's thinking because it's real internal kind of focus.
With her being the pure focus of the film is going to be really lovely.
Well we're both quite interested in the spiritual aspects of human existence.
So we thought this was quite nice to explore that through choreography and film.
So we wanted to make a journey but it's like a spiritual journey through metaphysical locations to enlightenment in a nutshell.
But these locations are also spaces in Wales, so it's very sort of set.
It's set within our dancer's head and her soul and spirit but it's also set in Wales.
Initially I wanted to do a film about water and that's where the whole idea started off.
And I really just wanted to have this empty pool I wanted to film in.
And I've done something before when I just really wanted to play the differences of having been wet and being in the pool.
Or you know we ended up using an empty bathtub and having them washing their faces.
And I think water is very much a symbol of life for me in many ways.
I had to be very flexible and just be open to learn on the set really what the challenges were.
But then I think also with the team and with the crew they were really open to try out all kinds of little experiments.
Because I really wanted them to jump over the camera and we did achieve that in the end.
Justin was the DOP. He was very, very just fantastic to work with.
His whole ideas he brought to the shots to eat to see.
He very much moved the camera as well which I found very interesting because it was like another dancer in the process.
It was beautiful.
I'm pretty fast and I'm really good at putting the pieces together.
So if I understand what you guys want and if you can communicate that to me then I can get you out.
I can get us all home real quickly.
That's real good at getting us home quick.
And of course making sure that everybody's shaking hands around the monitor at the end of the day.
So I was interested in the idea of making the fusion of beautiful and ugly images.
I decided to create a small mini narrative to frame the piece.
And my one is about a young girl Eve wakes up in a bed in a graveyard.
Obviously I've always been interested in working with young children in performance or film.
And for this one we did a big audition in Swansea from a talent agency.
And I had around I think it was 60 to 70 children turn up, girls turn up.
So it was a hard process but I'm really happy with choosing Eve and for her expression and for her dance.
The dancing was quite hard because I don't really do contemporary, I do street dance.
But the acting side was quite fun, yeah that was really fun.
They said they have to screen but that's going to be easier because they look like twins anyway.
We've had fun time creating with Neil, the other dancer.
Coming up with material, trying to imagine how a worm should move, what are the kind of defining characteristics.
And also the chavangels with our wings and just finding different styles and ways of moving really.
It's an interesting and challenging kind of experiment because I'm used to really being a filmmaker who uses traditional setups.
And then to work with the fisheye to create this immersive environment is really exciting.
To think about with narrative, obviously with narrative to condense stories, use editing, a lot to condense it.
But in this instance it's to make a narrative that is also an environment.
So I'm going to show you a little bit of what I'm going to show you.
I'm going to show you a little bit of what I'm going to show you.
Thanks for watching.
