Video Inspiration of the Day: BEATRICE AT THE MARKET – Shooting Dance

If you’re a videographer (or photographer for that matter) who has ever had the fortunate experience to shoot a dance piece, you’ll appreciate this short film by marzio on Vimeo.

Working with choreography and choreographers can sometimes be a frustrating experience: as a videographer, your concern is to best frame shots, as a choreographer, your collaborator, or client main concern is usually to have you capture their work… at times you’ll find yourself at loggerheads.

While traditionally performed in theaters on proscenium stages, dance is sometimes choreographed within non-traditional spaces, taking advantage of the space as almost a member of the company. If you find yourself, as marzio has, in the lucky position of working with a choreographer on a piece specifically done for video, you can come up with something like Beatrice at the Market.

marzio and choreographers Aline Nari & David Frangioni make exceptional use of a huge space, framing the movements to the space, and making use of my favorite “dance trick-edit” the horizontal split screen. Splitting the screen horizontally gives your the flexibility of showing the often-requested wide shot of an entire company of dancers, with a tighter, also-often-requested tighter shot allowing viewers to see facial expression.

Whether you are a dance fan or not, the one thing this piece is not, is boring to watch.