MASTERCLASSES: MOVING CAMERAS and SOUND!
Dance (Lens) Festival is offering two special 3-hour masterclasses with Takeshi Kondo and Darrin Verhagen to explore both practical and creative techniques, and approaches to enhance and expand your screendance making.
Workshops are suitable for all experience levels and for both dance and film artists. And at a minimum, can be undertaken with basic phone cameras/ recording.
All workshops are 3 hours (180 mins) with a 30 minute break mid-way through.
All Masterclass registrations include a Dance (Lens) Festival Pass granting full access to the Festival.
MOVING CAMERAS with Takeshi Kondo
1.30-5pm, Thursday 10 July
Celebrating the camera’s relationship with the moving body, this masterclass offers participants a way to play and think through the potential of the moving camera.
Participants should bring their own cameras (phones are fine) and are then welcome to use the gimbals, stabilisers, and a vest and shoulder rig provided by Takeshi during the workshop. Note that Dancehouse will also supply 2 gimbals for phones.
SOUND! with Darrin Verhagen
1.30-5pm, Saturday 12 July
The great connector; sound is the ultimate companion of both choreography and cinema. As a sound designer and composer, Darrin Verhagen has worked across live performance and screendance for decades. Whether using diegetic sound, new compositions, pre recorded tracks, or creating something entirely new, this masterclass opens your ears and your mind to the sonic potential of your next creative work.
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Takeshi Kondo is the founder and creative visionary behind Man of the Tree Productions, a studio known for its distinctive, visually rich storytelling. A graduate of Japan University College of Art, Takeshi launched his career in Tokyo with pioneering online video projects such as A-Sync (1997), creating bold work across the arts, music, culture, and documentary landscape. Now based in Melbourne for over two decades, he has carved out a dynamic career as a director, editor, producer, and cinematographer, collaborating with a wide range of artists, cultural institutions, and independent projects. His work is driven by a passion for creative experimentation and a deep respect for the stories at the heart of every project. Through Man of the Tree, Takeshi continues to bring ideas to life, crafting cinematic narratives that resonate with authenticity and imagination.
Explore his past collaborators and creative partnerships at https://manofthetree.com/
Darrin Verhagen is an Associate Professor in Digital Media (Sound) at RMIT University, a freelance sound designer, composer and installation artist. In theatre, he has worked with the MTC, STC, Malthouse, Queensland Theatre, Daniel Schlusser, Chamber Made Opera, Bell Shakespeare, Griffin Theatre Red Stitch, Theatreworks and Moira Finucane; In dance, he has worked with Chunky Move, Australian Dance Theatre, Sue Healey, Lucy Guerin, Expressions Dance Company, Michelle Heaven and Antony Hamilton; As a founding member of the (((20hz))) collective, his installations have fused sound with light, felt vibration and motion simulators, and have been exhibited at Scienceworks, White Night, the National Gallery of Victoria, Experimenta and Geelong After Dark. During the pandemic, he worked on a series of
remixes for the ACMI archives. His soundtracks have won various Green Room awards and his Shinjuku Thief score for the feature film,
Boys in the Trees was nominated for best soundtrack by both AACTA and the Film Critics Circle. His most recent score was for the Stan series
Invisible Boys. Darrin lectures in Sound Design and Soundtrack in the RMIT Digital Media program and is the director of the AkE (Audiokinetic Experiments) Lab where he researches the psychophysiology of multisensory experience. His current research is in enhanced audio in AgedCare, and his invention, “The TuneChair” won the
Decoding Dementia award from Dementia Australia in 2019.