The national lockdown might have had its challenges, but professional dancer and aspiring videographer Kris Swartbooi used it to her advantage by producing a self-reflective documentary focusing on how to navigate your way through this difficult time.
And to her surprise, her work was included in an annual final-year film exhibition at Nelson Mandela University.
The 20-year-old Swartbooi of Humewood completed her BA media communication and culture degree at NMU and hopes to graduate in April.
“After filming and submitting the assignment, which I thought was not my best work, my lecturer Dr Subeshini Moodley thought it would be a great addition to the annual final-year film exhibition.”
The self-reflective documentary titled Locked in Dance was an assignment for an integrated task.
“We had options between film genres, one being a narrative film,” she said.
“In all honesty, the pressures of university had kicked in, so I was choosing the easy option — a self-reflective documentary — and chose to use it as a lockdown diary.
“But that easy option quickly became an extensive time of production planning, filming, and editing and sometimes forgetfulness and procrastination.”
A lover of visual and creative arts, Swartbooi was drawn to this field of study because of her love of videography, which she found through running her own YouTube channel.
“My uncle introduced me to this platform in 2013 and so I had to teach myself the aspects of filming and editing.
“Editing became my favourite part of the production process.”
She used her smartphone because it was convenient.
“I took about two months filming this one-woman documentary.
“The first few shots I took in August of 2020.
“In putting it all together, I first decided to film the cutaway shots, which were the shots of me dancing or cooking, any shots where I am not actually talking.”
Thereafter she filmed her sit-down reflection, where she touched on all her emotions and trials, and tribulations from start to finish.
“These trials and tribulations or the emotions stemmed mostly from social media and internal insecurities.
“I became insecure with the fact that I was not already creating showstopping dance videos or collaborating full time with other creatives and I saw all this via social media posts from older creatives who most probably went through the same thing as me.
“They had their struggles (probably still do) but they had to push through that to do all the things they are able to do now.
“And that’s something I learnt and have come to understand.
“Then of course there was the pressures of university, trying to keep up with all the assignments because that was the adjusted assessment procedure for our course.
“I had to do a lot of late-night work, especially because I work much better at night,” she said.
She said making the documentary had taught her a few things.
“Doing self-reflection taught me how to align my goals based on new experiences because life does not always go according to how you planned it.
“Not only that, it’s a good way to ask yourself if you are happy with where you are in life.
“If you are not, it is up to you to figure out means to get back on track to happiness.”
Swartbooi has big plans.
“In the long term I want to possibly own my own creative dance studio but in the short term, I hope to secure a job in the field of video production, while still creating content in dance.
“I want to use the income from my work endeavours, and hopefully from YouTube, to develop my creative studio.
“In this way I can gain experience and then finance my future of owning my own creative dance studio.”
HeraldLIVE
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