Dance Video Shoot

We were set the task of creating a dance video so we had a shoot day arranged for us to work with a set of dancers to capture the footage we would need. On the day of the dance video shoot we were split in to 6 groups of 5/6 people. Each group was given a time slot of 40 minuets which was all the time we would have with the dancers. Lucky the group I was in was given the second time slot for filming which gave us some time to plan out the kind of shots we wanted to capture. The problem however was that because we only got to watch the dance once briefly prior to this we didn't really know what kind of things we could capture so we were coming up with some very generalised shot ideas which turned out not to be too useful because the dancers wouldn't do certain movements which worked with this.

We had two cameras to a group which was useful as it gave us twice as much chance of capturing the shots we wanted. We began by setting this up as quickly as possible so adjusting things like the white balance and the gain so we could get enough light in the shot and have a good range of tones. The only problem we uncovered later when reviewing the footage was the everyone had set the two cameras up differently for each group so none of the shots were completely matching unless it was done by the same group on the same camera. This was slightly frustrating considering that when it came to editing everyone was meant to be sharing footage but none of it matched.

During our shoot with the dancers we tried a few different approaches. We attempted some hand held shots and others on the tripod which restricted our movement but gave a steadier look to the work. We captured a lot of long shots of the whole of the dance but soon realised that we needed close ups too so began this also. This was trickier however to pin point which exact movements we wanted close ups of. One shot that I was really keen to get was a close up of the dancers feet which I achieved by putting the camera on the floor and slowly moving it across to follow the feet as they leaped. I was really happy with this however I wish that we had more time to get some similar to this as we ran out of time and didn't end up getting all the shots we wanted. I feel like we will do a much faster job in the future now because we have had some experience of this kind of filming. For me personally this is the first time I have ever done anything quite as complex as filming dancers. I am really happy with the results though and with the experience. I think sharing each others footage is a big help as well because other people captured things that we missed so it really helps complete the edits.