Videoblogger
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Belly dancers from different countries performing different types of belly dance including Azad Kaan as a special guests. Location London
My pet peeve: videos dubbed in music that has nothing to do with the actual performance music.
That's not to criticize you, Videoblogger, just the videographer's idea of a good way to present dancers.
Yes, I try to improve the quality and try to do more creative videos. For example in this video I have colloborated with a musician and a belly dancer and recorded in a studio just to create a nice video. Music and the location is the most difficult things to find. May be you can suggest me some locations if you know any good place in London?So these are actually your own compilations with dubbed in music?
As long as we've gone off on a tangent about dancers' frustrations with videographers, here are a few more ideas about what makes a less than desirable dance video:My pet peeve: videos dubbed in music that has nothing to do with the actual performance music.
Very nice video, and nice recording tips thanks. Most of the time it s not only the videographer but also the dancers make mistakes. They need to work on their coreography so when the videographer takes wide medium close shots it can be edited properly. This is a problem I am having most of the time when recording with belly dancers. As a result we ended up several videos which does not match with each other and obviously this effect the final edit really bad way and sometimes it leads to the problems unintentionally that you mentioned.As long as we've gone off on a tangent about dancers' frustrations with videographers, here are a few more ideas about what makes a less than desirable dance video:
- Extensive shots of bodies without heads. Facial expressions and head positions are part of the presentation of the dance. Also, human beings have heads, and dancers are human beings, not sides of beef being advertised as meat.
- Fetishized tight focus on hips or bust. Yes, this can be a very sensuous dance, but there is a fine line between highlighting the intangible magic of a beautiful body moving in an artful way, and providing self-pleasuring fodder for perverts. A brief torso close up or two for variety is one thing, but the video should be demonstrating the dancer's ability to bring the music to life, not creepily asking "Would you like some of this?"
- Lasciviously panning up and down the torso. Again, are we selling the dancing or the dancer's body?
- Focusing on one area of the body when something more interesting is happening somewhere else. This is just bad filming technique. Don't show feet if the dancer is standing still. Don't tighten into a head shot when the dancer gets to the most intricate hip-isolation sequence of the choreography.
- Too much editing. Constantly transitioning to different shots distracts from the flow of what the dancer is doing. If a "professional" dancer needs to rely on frantic editing to hold their audience's attention, maybe they're not ready to need a marketing video, and if an amateur wants a show video, maybe they'd rather have a record of their performance than a sizzle reel. And don't even think about trying to use every gimmick on the editing toolbar--nothing says "crazy, amateur video" like a star wipe.
- Filming 101 mistakes like insufficient lighting, not enough contrast between the dancer's costume and the background, distracting backgrounds, bad audio, shooting from so far away that the dancer's movements are barely distinguishable, and not sufficiently tracking movement so if the dancer wanders out of the center of the frame, the stage becomes empty. Even if you are the hafla organizer's spouse and you're filming the show for free, these mistakes aren't acceptable.
Basically, a good dance video spends most of its time showing most of the dancer, not sexually charged chunks of a dancer, and it respects how the dancer is interpreting the music, which gets back to Shanazel's point about trying not to break the bond between the performance and the original soundtrack.
Lurkers, if you've stumbled into this thread looking for hints to improve, please go (re-)watch some videos of classic dancers online, especially clips from old Egyptian movies to see how they film their performing sequences. They won't have modern, short-attention-span editing or swooping drone shots, but they generally demonstrate the best way to package the dancing...even in this example below, which is a compilation set to the "wrong" music.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. A dancer's obligation is to perform movements (either choreographed or improvised) that actualize the music in an artistic, personalized way while respecting the emotional and cultural significances of the song.They need to work on their coreography so when the videographer takes wide medium close shots it can be edited properly.
Nevertheless, unless a performance is specifically a collaboration between a dancer and a videographer, having the videographer tell the dancer how they ought to interpret their music seems a little like the frame telling the painting what kind of picture it should be.
If you are recording liveshow you can use multiple camera to capture wide and close shots.
Why can't you do this at private recordings?
I think you've done a good job with all the three videos posted in this thread. Matching moves with the non-original music show you've put a lot of effort to the editing.
The two latter videos have a bit too much close-ups of my preferences, but sometimes we have limited material to work on (yes, I've edited a lot of dance videos myself for dancer.
Congratulations on the 10 million views. It's an entertaining video evocative of the atmosphere of the venue and spirit of the dancer.
Some of us with decades of experience have made suggestions from a dancer's viewpoint in hopes that you will expand your repertoire to videos that present belly dance as more than a series of clips of well-honed muscular movement.