The Confession of Pain: Creating the Video

 Making of The Confession of Pain

    The process of making the first video involved a number of steps, from creating the movement to adapting the file for VR usage. Here, I will describe and record every step and decision made regarding my creation.

First step: vision

    Before starting the process, I had to clarify my idea and concept behind the 3D creation. The initial thought was to construct an immersive piece in which the viewer could meet and see my experience with chronic pain. The specific aspect that I wanted to highlight, was the age that chronic pain made me feel at. That is why I decided to use an elderly woman as my 3D model. I wanted the film to reflect how one, in this case, me, feels when living a life with chronic pain by encouraging the feelings of confusion, unpredictability, and lack of control in the viewer. In my vision, the film had to disturb the viewer, but at the same time create a sense of empathy and understanding. I chose the red light as a direct symbolism of pain that strikes the whole scene. The movement, which perhaps was the most important element of the video, was to be the act of limping. I chose this specific pattern because it directly affected the basic human action - walking. To me, it meant that not only did the chronic pain affect my passion to dance, but it also limited my ability to freely move in the world. Often, I felt angry and embarrassed about it, but at the same time, I was always curious and intrigued by the new movement pattern and the sensation of it.

Creating and exploring movement material

    As mentioned before, exploring and creating movement was a fundamental part of the piece. I have done many sessions before, where I investigated the act of moving with chronic pain. I used various forms such as set material (Exercise on six), improvisation, walking, and standing. Since I found walking to be the most fundamentally affected movement pattern of mine by pain, I chose to deeper analyse how I experience it. I do not always limp when I am walking, but it does often happen when I am taking my first longer travel of the day. I have noted down how my body feels when this happens, for example, the rhythm of the steps that becomes interrupted and the tilted pelvis that creates a feeling of imbalance for the whole body. Then I began to experiment with it: I changed up some of the rhythms, patterns, and body forms. When I viewed the recording of the movement, I recognised how distorted my body looks and decided to play with that. I created a 3-minute solo, in which, as I walk, my posture and structure gradually change. I begin by walking upright, then the limping begins to appear gradually taking over the whole body. Towards the end of the solo, my movement becomes almost creature-like, distorted, and unnatural - a reflection of how I feel when gripped by pain.

Motion capturing

    I have had the technical tryout of using the Kinect camera before. It came in very handy as have faced some errors during this stage of my creation. At first, I recorded my 3-minute solo walking back and forth. When importing the file to the Ipi Mocap software, I noticed that my skeleton was breaking. At first, I thought that I will manage to fix it over time, but as I began readjusting it, I realised how much work it will take and how time-consuming it is.

    That is why I decided that it would be better to rerecord the solo. After a few new takes, I understood that it is not going to work, as each time I turn, the camera does not capture my arm, which results in the breakage of the skeleton. It took me multiple hours and takes to find the right distance and pattern of the walk. Even though I tried to avoid it, due to the technical difficulties I found that it was best to walk without traveling - on spot. I had to adjust my sequence accordingly. It made it look even more distorted.

Animation in the Unreal Engine 4

    Just like with the tryout material, I now had to upload the animation to the game engine. I checked for any errors, and after finding that the motion capture was satisfactory, with only minor breakage I decided to work with it. Here is an example of how the animation looked on a default model in the engine:

The model

    Now was the time to find the right model for the piece, which would become the most important element of the experience. In my vision, as discussed before, it was to be an elderly woman. Living with chronic low back pain at the age of 22 sometimes feels like a highly premature condition. Although there are many children and young adults suffering from chronic pain it is most often associated with older people. When talking with other people about my experience I would often get a comparison to the elderly: for example, my grandmother believes that I have a good understanding of how she feels at her age of 78, because of our shared pain, while one of the health professionals referred to my injury as a condition of the elderly. Because of this, I often feel trapped in my own body that is able and trained to perform 45 minutes of continuous, highly physical, and complex choreography, but without painkillers struggles to make the simplest movement such as walking. That is why for my model I chose to use a figure of an old, gray-haired woman.

The 3D Model of an Elderly Woman