Dance of the mangroves
Mudskipping combines 3D film, dance and music to evoke a creative reimagining on the lives of mudskippers; amphibians that occupy the liminal spaces between the ocean and land in the mangroves of temperate, subtropical and tropical Australia.
The duration is 11 mins
Phoebe Hart is an award winning filmmaker and a lecturer in Film Screen and Animation at QUT.
Lizzie and Zaimon Vilmanis are performers and choreographers who have collaborated with acclaimed dance companies in Australia and the U.K. Lizzie is a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at QUT.
Gabriel Comerford is a contemporary dancer and a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at QUT.
Joe Carter is a producer, cinematographer and editor whose work has taken him all around the world. He is also a Lecturer in Entertainment Industries at QUT.
Yanto Browning is an associate lecturer in Music and Sound at QUT and also works as a freelance music producer, composer, sound engineer and mix engineer.
Tfer Newsome has been creating award-winning soundtracks for films and documentaries for over fifteen years. She teaches sound for the Film Screen and Animation discipline at QUT.
Dion Clark is a sound designer and sessional academic at QUT.
CL Terry is an illustrator and animator and a Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate from QUT.
David Stavanger is a poet and writer who has been published in various Australian and international magazines, newspapers and anthologies.
Troy Armstrong is a sought after art director and costume designer, who teaches at QUT Creative Industries.
Mudskippers can be spied along the banks of the Brisbane River (including the mangroves surrounding QUT Gardens Point campus) and Moreton Bay. They are quite active when out of water, feeding and interacting with one another, and defending their territories.
Phoebe Hart grew up in Townsville in far northern Queensland. Her parents were trawler operators and she often watched mudskippers dancing in the mud of the Ross River next to where the boats were moored. She thought it would be wonderful and messy if humans danced in the mud like mudskippers. Years later, she decided it would be great to make that very thing a reality for the film ‘Mudskipping’.
The film itself combines the talents of filmmakers, composers, designers and performers, many of whom are graduates of QUT or currently teach at QUT and have an established creative practice background. There was also a small army of QUT Creative Industries students who helped out behind the scenes as assistants and runners.
Making 3D video is more challenging than shooting regular 2D video and the team did a lot of testing with the equipment before going into production. It’s part science, part art. Filming in areas such as mangroves also poses several challenges. The team had to work with the tides and weather, and take safety precautions to avoid stings, bites and cuts. They also had to consider and protect the natural environment, as well as local residents and users of the area.
Mangroves, mudflats and intertidal zones are familiar to many residents of southeast Queensland but perhaps little understood, or perhaps even regarded as stinky mosquito infested wastelands better off ‘reclaimed’ for coastal services and urban living. However, mangroves trap sediments and nutrient runoff from rivers and creeks that might otherwise damage the Great Barrier Reef and they are important habitats and breeding grounds for many species of birds, animals and fish. The creatures that live in these ecological niches are very interesting and have their own physical and behavioural adaptations.
Around 17% of Australia’s mangroves have been destroyed since European settlement. These actions demonstrate how nature has been ‘othered’ from our everyday human existence. We often think about plants and animals as persons having little to do with our lives but humans, plants, animals, ancestors, spirits and substances such as mud are all one and the same. ‘Mudskipping’ is a cultural intervention which seeks to reposition humans as inclusive of the world rather than being in some way apart or even in conflict with it.
Screen based entertainment is likely to become more immersive and interactive. So why not make films which are almost like attending a live performance in person? It means anyone can enjoy the experience “being there” even if the original presentation is somewhere which near impossible to access.
‘Mudskipping’ uses 3D video technology to capture performances. Stereoscope photography has been around for quite a long time - more than 100 years in fact. ‘Mudskipping’ visually references classic 3D films such as ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ (1954).
Recording live-action 3D film requires two cameras which are spaced apart slightly so one becomes the left eye, the other the right eye. The result is that the brain of the person watching a 3D film is ‘tricked’ into seeing the image as stereoscopic.
There are two camera systems used for ‘Mudskipping’ - a Panasonic 3D camcorder which has two cameras built into the same device and a GoPro 3D camera rig which joins two 2D cameras in a single housing via a synchronization cable. These cameras were attached to tripods, cranes and drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) to capture the dancers from a variety of angles.
The film is viewed with polarised glasses, as polarised light wave vibrates on only one plane. The projector separates the left and right eyes so the light is transmitted on different planes for each eye and the glasses separate out the two images again, making the image appear three dimensional to the spectator.
The film was shot over two days in the Moreton Bay region and took about two weeks to edit, mix, online and grade.
Cnr Kelvin Grove Rd and Musk Avenue,
QUT Kelvin Grove Campus