PROFESSOR JOAN KARLEN ABOUT
STUDYING WITH DONNA CAMERON: "Partly due to my success working with documentary video, I wanted to learn about
the possibilities of combining video with dance. During summer 1996 I attended the video production course at NYU’s
Tisch Film School. My broad purpose was to learn new ways of seeing. The course dealt with hands-on field and TV studio camera
work, editing, and viewing the weekly projects of my nineteen classmates.
From Professor Donna Cameron's commentary
I learned to see each director's style, aesthetic choices, and recurring themes -- and became aware of my own. I also learned
to see frame composition in a new way. Initially I thought of the video frame like the proscenium opening of a stage. The
limitation in this way of seeing was that, in my mind's eye, I was always sitting in the same seat in the audience, requiring
my imaginary eye to travel to what took place on stage. I came to realize that altering the camera’s point of view allowed
me and the viewer to enter the personal space between the camera and the subject. I think of this as being much like an actor
who draws the audience into the performance not by projecting out, but by focusing in. Considering the camera’s proximity
to the body became a theme in my work, including extreme close-ups that transform the body into a landscape, integrating camera
movement with human movement by handing the camera to a moving dancer, and layering and blending close-up and long-shot images.
During the Tisch film course I had my first non-linear editing experience using Adobe Premiere software. While experimenting
with Premiere’s compression process, several frames were dropped from my footage. The resulting images included unexpected
pauses and many "in-between" movement moments. Whereas my background in classical dance and composition featured
completed movements and extended, balanced lines, the pauses created by chance during digital compression were moments I found
far more personal. These paused images reminded me of walking past an open doorway and glimpsing someone in the middle of
an action, unaware of anyone else's presence. I like seeing images of dancing that look less planned and more natural -- dancing
that appears as though no one is watching. This experimental footage became Beach Dance. I began to experiment with ways to
include this candid quality in all of my work.
Working in Macromedia Director taught me to see and work with a nonlinear,
multi-layered compositional frame. From 1996-98, in four multimedia and dance preservation workshops sponsored by The Ohio
State University Department of Dance, I learned Director, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe PhotoShop software programs and created
an interactive CD-ROM project, Joan Karlen, Choreographer."
