dcf.cymru stimulus sheet · Dance · Year 11
The film, the company, the people, the reviews and every figure on this sheet are invented. Treat it as an unseen work. The history it draws on is real: coal mining shaped the Cynon Valley, and Tower Colliery, at the top of the valley, was the last deep mine there when it closed in 2008.
| Time | Camera and edit | What we see and hear |
|---|---|---|
| Section A: Shifft (Shift), inside the engine house | ||
| 00:00 | Wide shot, fixed camera in the doorway, 40 seconds with no cut. | Four dancers in a line perform the digging motif in unison: both arms swing down on a diagonal, pull back to the hip, step forward. It is repeated, harder each time. Daylight through broken windows. Sound: heavy breathing and boots on the metal floor. |
| 00:40 | Close-ups, quick cuts every 2 to 3 seconds. | Hands gripping, boots stamping, dust lifting from the floor. Brass band chords begin, low and slow. |
| 02:10 | Low-angle tracking shot moving along the diagonal line. | The digging motif passes down the line in canon, one dancer after another. The camera moves at the same speed as the canon, so each dancer strikes as the camera reaches them. |
| 03:00 | Wide shot, fixed. | All four in unison again, with accumulation: the motif grows by one action each time. Costumes: grey and brown work shirts and trousers, dusted with black. |
| Section B: Cau (Closure), inside the engine house | ||
| 03:40 | Hard cut to black, then handheld close-ups. | A sampled pit hooter sounds three times. The brass stops. Silence except for breathing. |
| 04:30 | Slow motion (filmed at high speed, played at half speed) until 06:10, 1 minute 40 seconds. Jump cuts to the empty engine house. | The line breaks into a scattered formation. One by one the dancers fall; the others catch and lift them in contact work, until nobody is left to catch the last one. |
| 06:10 | Normal speed. Head torches are the only light. | A voice-over: Emrys, in Welsh: “Roedden ni’n un.” (“We were one.”) There are no subtitles. |
| Section C: Cof (Memory), on the mountainside | ||
| 07:20 | Wide shot of the valley, then a medium two-shot. | Daylight. Emrys, in his own donkey jacket, teaches Mali the digging motif. She faces him and mirrors him, first late and clumsy, then exactly. Mali wears red: the only strong colour in the film. |
| 08:30 | Handheld, following the dancers as they arrive. | The four dancers walk up the hill and join in one at a time: accumulation of dancers. The brass band returns, now in a major key. |
| 09:10 | Drone shot from high above, 1 minute, slowly rising. | All six form a circle and perform the digging motif in unison. From above, the circle and the swinging arms look like a turning winding wheel at a pit head. The faces are too small to see. |
| 10:10 | Extreme close-up of two pairs of hands. | Emrys and Mali perform the digging motif in retrograde, the actions in reverse order, then stillness. Final wide shot of the valley. Ends 11:00. |
3,200 people started watching the premiere. The chart shows the percentage still watching at each minute.
| Minute | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| % watching | 100 | 97 | 95 | 94 | 92 | 88 | 77 | 75 | 74 | 73 | 72 | 71 |
Review 1: “The tracking shot at 02:10 is the best thing in the film: the camera itself joins the canon, like a pit cage moving past men at work. The slow motion in Cau is beautiful for the first minute; by the second, it feels as if the film has stopped breathing, and not in the way it intends.”
Review 2: “For seven minutes we learn Emrys’s face. Then, at the moment the motif is finally handed on, the camera flies away into the sky and he becomes a dot. The drone shot turns meaning into pattern.”
Review 3: “Seen from the drone, the circle becomes a winding wheel, turning again on the mountain. It is the image the whole film has been waiting for.”