FILM & VIDEOGRAPHY
GrACELAND
Produced and Edited by Nina Segal
Music: "Graceland," by Paul Simon
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The short film, “Graceland,” directed and edited by Nina Segal, is a stop-motion animation made entirely from paper cutouts, with stills taken from a documentary-style video on a family trip. Originally filmed in Tacoma, Washington, Nina was inspired to make the animation at her brother’s college graduation, with the film mirroring her relationship with her brother as they grew up to moving on to the next step of life.
HeavY Balloon
Choreography by Clara Carter-Klauschie
Music: "Heavy Balloon" by Fiona Apple
Featuring:
Clara Carter-Klauschie (splitting center, front row)
Seqouia Gibson (splitting center, back row)
Anaya Sanders (far right, front row)
Keira Lacount (far left, back row)
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“Heavy Balloon” is a piece I choreographed for the Fall 2024 Hamilton High School Dance Concert. It relies heavily on the songwriting and thematic arc of Fiona Apple's “Heavy Balloon,” off of Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020).
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is among my favorites of Apple’s albums, but I’d previously choreographed only to The Idler Wheel… and Extraordinary Machine. Recorded during the COVID pandemic within Apple’s house, it has a beautifully homemade quality, presenting a completely distinct and texturally rich jumping-off point for choreography.
After three rounds of auditioning this piece, all my fellow dance classmates had “I spread like strawberries, I climb like peas and beans” permanently wedged in their minds, along with the pulsing, percussive beat characteristic of “Heavy Balloon.” I believe quite a few new Fiona fans were formed along the way – quite the win!
I ultimately choreographed this piece to embody chaotic power, freeing the aquifer of energy often stored just beneath the surface. But this release never impels a resolution. I do not believe true freedom is ever experienced within the dance; even in moments of chaos, energy is always “busting at the seams,” leaving the act of liberation unfinished. Our movements have a certain sharpened dullness, intended to convey this unrest. Through my eyes, the piece is cyclical, with every expressed bit of energy being eventually recaptured. The movements are intended to mimic a bent piece of wire. Round edges and sharp points, perhaps painstakingly cut from a larger coil of wire by a very dull pair of bolt cutters (you see what I did there). A certain rigidity within fluidity. A quick-to-dissipate power that momentarily threatens all onlookers with its poky ends.
As I return to “Heavy Balloon,” I do, as always, wish that I could revise it, figuratively bending the wire to change formations, timing, and technical mistakes. In this concert format, the version on camera never seems to quite capture the essence of the work. The inherent nature of my crafting dances for performance is that they only truly exist a few times, in a few forms. Both permanent and fleeting.
Though I struggle to accept this inability to rework, I find it productive to think of each piece as merely a snapshot from a broader collection of dances. Through this lens, one piece is never a finished product. I could even, hypothetically, edit together many fragments of my past routines and craft a collaged film that I might enjoy more than any one of the pieces on their own.
Ultimately, my experience of dance has consistently supported one truth: works resonate differently when observed than when physically experienced. That is the source of my self-critique. I am always comparing the product I watch back to the experience of performance, which is consistently more intense and fulfilling. So with that long-winded preface placed on the table, I hope you enjoy “Heavy Balloon” and experience even a fraction of what performance felt like.
Tyrannosaurus Rex Paleoart Process
By Callum Carter-Klauschie
In this piece, I began by importing a reference for proportions and blocking out the figure of the main subject of the painting with thick, messy lines. I kept tweaking it until I was happy with the base. I then add another layer and refine the shape as well as some basic details like fully shaping the lips, refining the tilt of the head, and the eyes. In this stage, I made sure to draw a few lines and wrinkles to show the contour and shape of the animal's body. This helped me to shade later.
After this step, I thought about my color palette and any patterns I wanted on the skin. I am often very indecisive about which colors and shapes I use and spend quite a large portion of time considering what will make the most sense and look best. I end up using countershading in this painting, which is commonly seen in nature and means the top half of the animal's skin or coat is darker while leaving the bottom half lighter, allowing the animal to blend into its surroundings. I then added the shadows to my animal and began rendering. When I am doing this step, I always make sure to think about how my lighting will affect the drawing if it were 3D, and where the light would reach. This process is always slightly different for every drawing I'm doing, but I tend to do a clipping mask with the filter multiplied on for the shadows and a separate clipping mask with the filter overlay for my highlights. Because shadows tend to feel cooler, I give them a blueish purplish hue, and because highlights are often warm, I tint them with yellow or orange. I like to turn off my color layer when I am doing this, so it's easier to perfect the lighting.
The next step is where it really gets time-consuming. This is the rendering phase where I make the scales, refine the textures, and vary the colors. I add veins and rimlight. Throughout this process, use the same brush to make it look a bit like a traditional painting. Once I'm finished rendering the Tyrannosaurus, I turn to the background, thinking about what the lighting on the animal means for the background as I color the sky a light blue. I paint a few trees and add a subtle blur to keep the focus on the dinosaur.
THE CORRIDOR
Choreography, Production, and Performance by Clara Carter-Klauschie
Filming and Editing by Matt Klauschie
Music: "Every Single Night" by Fiona Apple
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“The Corridor” is a dance film I created 4 years ago, in 7th grade, prompted by a quarantine-era assignment for my dance class. Our task was to create a piece of choreography that told a clear story; the angst of pre-teen life, my love for Fiona Apple’s songwriting, and extensive filming + editing by my dad produced this 2-minute film. To this day, it is one of my favorite dances I have ever choreographed. I thought it relevant to revisit my written reflection on this piece, typed on April 30th of 2021. In it, I describe the film’s narrative: I drift into a warped world of my subconscious, trying and failing to evade the issues of everyday life. Moving from location to location, through the corridors of my mind, I am in search of freedom. At every turn, reminders of dark realities rear their ugly heads. Out of this lengthy search grows an addiction to detachment from reality. I can no longer exist outside of this nightmarish world. Now, I thirst for feeling -- even if that feeling is pain. In Apple's words, “I just wanna feel everything.”
I’d like to clarify that at 12 years old, my experience with emotion was by no means this twisted. I’ve always used art, particularly the art of dance, to embody emotions that demand utter commitment to an intense character. In some cases, that character is an exaggerated version of myself. In others, it is completely fabricated. Whether rooted in fact or fiction, dance is always a creative and emotional outlet for me. Each time I revisit this piece, I am transported back into that hallway, consumed by the intensity and apprehension of performance. This rawness lives with me, buried deep inside. Dance provides access to the emotions that I cannot express outside of movement.
I clearly remember the hours of choreography, retaking shots, and obsessing over footage, all in an attempt to communicate my vision on screen. The final result owes much to circumstance: if I hadn’t been tasked with filming at home, this particular vision might never have come to life. Today, as I continue to create and perform pieces in a similarly dark vein, I aim to embody truly complex characters. I still turn to “The Corridor” for inspiration, looking past the questionable nature of my technique and my choice in tights (far too tan for those socks) to access the raw emotion. So, with all that said, I hope you enjoy watching it!
COLORFUL MINDS
Production, Videography, and Editing by Nina Segal
Music by Arielle Efron
My name is Nina Segal, I’m a junior in AMPA at Hamilton High School, and this is my documentary! For a lot of my life, I felt that I was trying too hard to be creative and not just naturally being creative. One day, I was sitting in my room, brewing and complaining about not being able to think of anything to film for my assignment, so I pulled out my camera and started filming myself being in a writer's block. This launched the idea for the film, and I decided to interview some of my beautiful friends, all of whom I would personally consider creative, to see if they felt the same. The music in the film is created by my best friend, Arielle Efron, a senior at BHHS, and I, after being in a similar creative block. If anything, this film showed me that everything has to come from something, and there’s no way to begin if you can’t bring yourself to change your perspective.
