Research - Dance on Film

Sia - Elastic Heart


        


In this music video by Sia, for the song Elastic heart, the space she uses is incredible in terms of dance ability and adaptability. I am incredibly interested in how the tone and muted style of the piece flow into the expressive dance form, and strongly feel we could have collated something similar for our piece, or part of our project.
I particularly admire the use of close ups as well as medium shots, which give an open and unintrusive depiction to the story the dancer is trying to tell. While it's nice to have artistic shots and stylised views, it's also extremely important, especially when filming dance, to let the piece breathe, and furthermore to allow the viewer to see it in it's entirety.
Although the style of dance isn't relative to the theme of Hip Hop our brief entails, the expressive form is identical to the emotive and interpretive piece we wanted to create. By letting the dancer breathe in their space, and use the area to their ability, it gives a very expressive feel to the piece, and I believe is a true quality in dance that is present in every piece, especially when being exhibited or in a performance circumstance.
The song flows beautifully, and helps to attain a perfect expression by the dancer, with little effort. The way the dancer interacts with the song is very inspiring as a media practitioner, and emotes strong feelings of unity, belief, and strength.




Step-Up 2 - Break Dance



         


This video features some professional dancers, and some actors who have the ability to street dance, n their final performance of Step-Up 2, the film. In this sequence, the lighting is incredibly important to the cinematography of the piece. The floodlights could be interpreted to highlight their talent and skill, alongside creating a silhouetted effect, and playing on the urban stereotype that Hip Hop dance holds. The rain is incorporated to create a stylistic and dramatic effect as well as to make their dance movements more pronounced.
In terms of camera work, the camera swings in and out to a majority of views of this piece, from close ups of hand movements, similar that to the style of tutting, but also focussing on the dancers as a whole and looking specifically at their body movements and how they work with the song remix playing.
The amount of breaks, and beat drops in the song enable the dancers to keep time. In terms of choreographed pieces and how they're filmed, as this is a group piece, the focus in on the group as whole, before focussing on the sub groups they split in to. This creates a joined, collective piece by representing each dancer as an individual in their own way. This piece seems tighter in execution due to the repetitive practices required for the final production, compared to the piece within the music video to the song 'Elastic Heart' previously mentioned, which seems more expressive and 'freestyle', and therefore, although more room for error, creates a more sensual piece.