biennialFreerunner: Traceur Tag launches tonight

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Traceur Tag launches tonight

The day is finally here. Tonight the video is launched in The Box cinema in FACT to an invited audience and the last six months of planning, pre-production, production, post-production, DVD creation, website building has now finally come to an end.

The website www.traceurtag.com also launches tonight. On it is background information on the project and it will be updated up to Christmas with more content as it becomes available. The video can be viewed on the main page after the Biennial exhibition opens on the 30th October. The project blog is available to read through the archive section.

The video will tomorrow be exhibited as part of the Future, Fiction and Fantasy Liverpool Biennial Schools Project.

I would just like to acknowledge the the following people who have given some/a lot/all their free time, skill, creativity and expertise along the way:

The core biennialFreerunner Productions team - Dave Bentick, Matt Frodsham, Adam Hamilton, Jose Flores & Stas Krakiewicz

All the pre-production contributors (every contribution helped the project progress) - you know who you are

Toxteth TV for the facilities

John Eyre for the score (and Adam on guitar '-) )

Ste for the printing of the invites

Alan Bridge of Creative Griffin for being a CSS and Flash maestro

Anna from FACT for tonights event

The FACT bar staff for keeping me in caffeine whilst I worked on their very comfy sofas as if it were my office

St Helens College especially Marianne McCracken for seeing this project as a valid academic research project and supporting me in it; and Paul Allen for releasing Matt to work on the project's considerable design. Shabba!

De La Salle School for the actual project and Sophie Bower for putting Jo and me in touch 7 months ago.

In fear of doing a Gwyneth Paltrow and gushing I think I've covered everyone. If they come out the last post on this blog will be photos from tonight.

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The Project

Traceur Tag
De La Salle School in collaboration with St Helens College

The theme for the schools project, Future, Fiction and Fantasy, seemed to instantly form a connection with our idea to produce a piece of work using Parkour and the virtual world as the concept. This film was a collaborative effort between De La Salle School and St Helens College and it was only through this collaboration that the desire to create a film based on the computer game genre was realised.

It was at the initial stages of the collaboration that contemporary artworks such as Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle proved influential along with the film Jump Britain and a variety of computer games such as Halo and Unreal, which helped us to establish the kinds of environment that could form the basis for the film.

Without a doubt the vehicle which supported this project’s creative growth and encouraged clear communication throughout was this blog, instigated by Dave Wood. This blog became a hub of activity which maintained consistency in content during the six month period. Ideas, thoughts, concerns, artistic references and discussions were posted daily, hourly and often by the minute in pursuit of our collective goal.

The most interesting element of the blog, from an educational perspective, was the innovative approach to formative assessment, providing rapid responses to creative problems in a contemporary manner aiding motivation and communication. Both De La Salle School and St Helens College are now exploring ways in which blogs can impact upon student’s development and bring assessment methods into the 21st Century.

This film explores a passion for an activity that in society can be considered as subversive or anti social and channels that enthusiasm into a creative medium. From a school’s point of view the boys were given an opportunity to express themselves in a language that is comfortable to them but in a safe environment, they worked with students witnessing the creative process in action but also what vocational links art can provide.

Finally, working on the School’s Project with the Biennial team has provided us with a fantastic opportunity to investigate contemporary approaches to schemes of work, work collaboratively between different institutions and the community and develop effective forms of communication, all of which have supported our personal development for the delivery of new initiatives such as the re-launch of the Secondary Curriculum and the introduction of the Creative and Media Diploma.

Joanne Millea

Whois biennialFreerunner?

biennialFreerunner Productions is the creative collective formed out of this Biennial project. It soon became apparent to Dave and Jo that the pooled talent, the excitement and the dedication of the students and graduates had naturally formed into a "Hot Group" of multi-disciplinary creatives. As such, the project Jo had brought to Dave had evolved beyond its original scope and remit. It was therefore only natural to give this multi-disciplinary team a collective identity. The biennialFreerunner blog had actually become biennialFreerunner Productions.

There are 6 core collective members and 1 associate member of this collective: co-founders Dave Wood and Jo Millea, Adam Hamilton, Matt Frodsham, Dave Bentick and Stas Krakiewicz. Jose Flores is based in Brighton and his opening scenes were produced remotely.

Already one member of this collective has gone onto make a music video for a band as a result of his experiences as part of this collective.

See www.biennialfreerunner.com for more information or email info@biennialfreerunner.com.

Books by Dave Wood