Shooting a contemporary bird

Filming a dance performance is fun. Specially if you haven’t seen it beforehand and you don’t know the movements. It’s like  shooting a bird (with your camera) performing an erratic flight.

This is Nuno Fado, a gig from portuguese singer and dancer Nuno Silva that I filmed. Of course, before starting, you have to check the space and how much of it the dancer is going to use. As well as the light (not that you can do much about it). Then take care of the audience not blocking your shot (without disturbing them) and make sure you are recording the sound output. I personally use a microphone transmitter directly into my camera, but for this gig I was provided the final sound mix, so I just had to synch it.

After the entire video is done, I show it to the dancer and ask him to highlight the best bits. Why? Because if I have to make a wrap up video I need to know what looks artistically best, and it might be different to what the filmmaker thinks.

The funniest part is putting the transitions from song to song, and make it feel good with the constant change in rhythm and mood.