Wren Wild video pack for Playorama

Wren Wild?

I'm Ledbetter (Dylan) maker of ART7 and various other Playdate games. As part of the gallery, I had a series of images from another major passion of my life - Dance. Wren Wild is an Aerial Dance Fusion performance duo out of Austin, TX consisting of myself and my partner Misty. We combine fluid fusion dance (grounded in Blues and Swing) with improvised aerials and tricks. We've been dancing together for over a decade and over that time have polished ourselves through video. 

This is a Video pack for the Playorama app for Playdate showing a number of pieces we've done for our musician friends and for ourselves. RISE ABOVE  and Kiss From a Rose were both choreographed, the others are all dance flow. I produced and edited all of these with the exception of Kiss From a Rose which was part of a larger showcase before the pandemic, produced by Founders City Films

Playorama?

I Looove the Playorama app and love the idea of stretching the bounds of the Playdate as a game/app platform. For ease of use, the creator hteumeuleu has allowed me to include the current version of Playorama in this download, but you can also hit their page to support! 

FYI you can use the Crank to slow adjust the speed of playback. Hit UP on the Dpad to see the timeline and current speed, UP again to dismiss. 

Performances

From the moment I loaded up Playorama, I knew I wanted to see our art in glorious 1-bit. I think they've transferred more-or-less beautifully. I'm putting up this pack for free and am hoping it spurs others to go through the conversion process to make more content for this platform! For example the entire Playdate Community Awards and be downloaded and watched here!

To see the videos in full click the links below and please find and enjoy the musicians that drive us to move!

RAIN - Beat Root Revival - Our friends Andrea and Ben of Beat Root Revival are massive supporters of so many artists and other musicians. Andrea approached us to make a video for her single RAIN and it was our honor to make it happen.

Fairy Tale - EyeQ - I met EyeQ as part of the Nerdcore scene here in Austin and at PAX South. His performances instantly moved me with his passion and struggle as an artist. This song in particular still gives me chills.

Lydia - Curtis Lee - We made this video as a fan project for our friend Curtis Lee. He puts his whole soul into this song and it has been our favorite of his for years.

Thunderstorm - The haunting melody of Long Long Time Ago by Javier Navarrete guides our bodies under a massive balloon cloud. This is Another passion and career - I work with The Balloon Collective doing art/event installs and balloon decor. As soon as we built this massive cloud installation with lighting and thunderstorm sfx, I knew we had to dance and shoot.

RISE ABOVE - We produced this video as a milestone to mark Misty's recovery and return to dance after we shattered her heel in practice. The full story is at the link, but the video itself is a depiction of her struggle through recovery and the conquering of so many demons that brought out.

Kiss From a Rose - The audience reaction in the opening bars of Kiss From a Rose was all the thanks we needed to put this show on. From the cosplay to the chase to the dramatic escape - this was among my favorite songs as a child and performing it was a dream!

How?

To make this work, download Playorama and Sideload it onto your Playdate. Download the Videos and copy the .pdv/.pda files into the App's data folder from your computer. 

Make sure to unzip the package and just move the files! The instructions are included below and on the Playorama page.

There are 6 Videos in total and it will definitely take a bit of time to transfer. I think for me it was around 10 minutes. You can do individual videos by copying over just the files you want if space or time is a concern. Make sure you transfer both the Audio and Video files of each. 

Note: You can also view these on the Playdate Simulator on a computer that you get when you download the Playdate SDK. Enjoy!