Final Chapter of Pure Street living.

Passion

1. A powerful and overwhelming feeling that strips you from reality and launches you into a hyper-state of being.
2. The uncontrollable desire that drives our existence

When I think of passion, I can’t help thinking about the arts. I have been a passionate arts-person for as long as I can remember. For now, though, I want to tell you about my past passion for dance, which until recently, had dwindled to the side to make room for photography and film.

With the joint production between Silverpoint and  living., a dance company based in Toronto and founded by Mario Fugnitto and Haley McPherson, both Keith and I got to dive into the world of dance again, on the contemporary side. We were delighted to work with two well respected dancers within the Canadian dancing industry. For me, however, it was like combining chocolate, whip cream and strawberries together in a bowl: simply delicious.

Revisiting the dancing world again, but combining it with my growing knowledge of the media world, allowed me to put two things that I cherish together. They compliment each other so well because dancers have a unique understanding of the way they can move their body to produce pleasing shapes and frames. Furthermore, professional cinematographers also have an understanding of shapes and framing which, when combined with dancing, allows for a lot of potentially nice shots.

When shooting a dance video, it is important to work alongside the choreographers to analyse their movement. This in turn allowed us to produce our own camera choreography because the movement of the dancers had to be complimented by our own movement. For instance, when Haley is in her white costume and doing a turn jump over Mario in the air, I chose to have a stable camera shot from a high angle off to the left side of center. This made the jump look bigger and gave it a bit of a concave look.

Keith was a great partner on set. With Keith on camera, I was able to concentrate on the camera position, shot list, and the dancers themselves. I had to act as the eyes for Mario and Haley and make sure that we had at least two good dance takes for each sequence.

Overall the final project was a success and I look forward to producing many more dance productions down the line with Silverpoint.

Jenn