Diverse Dance Works - Dance Studio - Community

Dreamshock were asked by a local dance teacher Ayse Denizli to help promote her new dance academy. 

We suggested making a 2-minute promotional video online showcasing what she does best.

We began storyboarding the idea and had a clear vision without too much thought. We wanted a story, rather than a simple few clips of a dance class. So we wanted a build up into the video, an introduction and then focus on Ayse teaching as well as some solo segments to mix to show just how good she can dance too.

We wanted these two main elements to be quite distinctively different even though we were shooting in the same location. We only had a couple of hours to put all of this together, and we had researched the location and found out there wasn't much window light, so we could rely on the main room lights for teaching segments and switch these all off and use the Dedo lights to get something more creative and stylistic for Ayse's solo segments.

We also shot in the evening to help with the darker light. We broke the session into two parts, focusing firstly on the intro - the wide room shots, lights turning on, and preparations.

Then moved on to the dancing - Ayse first in her normal casual dancewear before moving on to her branded uniform for the class - this helped keep the two distinctively different.

Having someone that can do anything you ask them really helps with a shoot like this, the first segments were quite directed but then once the class took place it was much more of a candid style.  

The equipment

We took the usual arsenal - the glidecam, slider, monopod and tripod. My personal ethos is quite distinctive and evident in most of my work - I like shots to move, be fluid and not static.

That being said I do like to throw in the occasional static shot to break up the footage, but 9 times out of 10 if it moves from the slider or glidecam, I will go for that shot.

Simply to look more cinematic. The biggest difference on this shoot though was the fundamental item - the camera.

It was not my tried and tested canon hardware that I have been using for around 12 years.