"The Terri Dreams" is not just a stage performance or a movie: It's both. This production, which showcases Ball State University students' writing, art and music, will make its premiere at 8 p.m. tonight in Sursa Performance Hall.
"The Terri Dreams" combines filmed segments with live performances - a first for a Ball State production - to tell a story about one man's dreams of a woman.
This man, Joseph, has nothing but hopes to be saved by a woman who only exists in his dreams, according to the production's Web site. Joseph describes to his psychiatrist five dreams he had. Each dream was made into a film segment by a director and a composer.
Senior Nick Johnson conceived the idea and is one of the five directors of "The Terri Dreams."
"Half of the movie is pre-recorded and half of the movie is going to be acted live," Johnson said. "Both of these medias are being brought together by advanced technology."
The audience will watch the production in Sursa Hall, but actors performing live and musicians playing the soundtrack live will be located in the music technology studios, he said.
Jared Jeffries, director of the third dream, said it used first-rate 3-D computer animation created by senior Trevor Danehy for the first half of the segment.
"Trevor's stuff is really gorgeous, and it climaxes with a plane crash in the desert," Jeffries said. "The rest of the dream is live action shot on high-definition."
While Jeffries used 3-D computer animation, Paul Symons, director of the second dream, used a technique called rotoscoping, a process in which animators trace live-action movement frame by frame. Rotoscoping requires animators to project film images onto a frosted glass panel so the animator can redraw them.
"It's a very arduous process, and I had a crew of six animators, besides myself, to work on it," Symons said.
The fourth dream's director, Griffing Partington, said he thinks his directing style will stand out from the other four.
"Each director had a much different approach with filming the dreams," Partington said. "I feel as if the other directors were much more alternative with their storytelling than mine."
The approach Partington took involved a more narrative directing approach, he said. He placed importance on ighting to emphasis the theme of being alone, he said.
Partington said he also worked closely with his composer, Adam Wilson, because his segment has no dialogue.
"I knew a composer would be creating a soundtrack, so I was banking on the fact that the original score would set the mood of the piece," Partington said. "My composer was also one of my extras in the film. I wanted him to understand what I was trying to achieve by bringing him on location before anything was actually filmed."
The collaboration paid off, he said, because his group was the first to complete editing the film and composing the music.
"I'm proud of this short [film] and anxious to hear the composition performed live in front of an audience," Partington said.
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