The Phoenix Dancer

Sharing this concept dance video with the #Threespeak community for the first time. What inspired this project: For the longest time I wanted to do a concept dance video. After working with such amazing dance companies such as @alt-synergy, and going on tour and witnessing so much versatility in the field of dance inspired me. Obviously I can’t dance but I can work a camera so I decided to put my skills to that task. I grew up watching a lot of anime, a lot of kung fu flicks and what stood out to me the most was the fluidity of motion which is very similar to dance. If you think about fight choreography, it is essentially a dance routine. One of my favorite animes of all time, Samurai Champloo, was very inspirational in this project and films such as the Shaolin versus Wu-Tang, Five Fingers of Death and other movies of that nature were also huge influences in my personal life and my filmmaking. I’m also very much interested in Greek mythology. Originally this project was going to feature a Medusa character dancing for her life based on the original tale of medusa. For those who don’t know I’m not going to spoil the story because I may end up still producing that project sometime soon. Anyways I reached out to Hara because she is in fact Greek and I had a feeling that she would connect with the story just based on the origins of it and she did. Upon talking with her and brainstorming by myself I decided that the task of producing a Medusa themed video was a little bit too much for what I wanted to do at the moment. The idea of Medusa soon morphed into a story about harpies and then eventually it evolved into a story about the Phoenix. Once I narrowed down the Phoenix plot, Hara went off to go figure out the choreography while I went about scouting locations talking with the costume designer Keia and securing the talented make up artist Evelyn. The final product in which you will be witnessing in the video above is the culmination of four individuals and several weeks of work in preproduction, one day of production, and several weeks of post production. I would like to thank all the women involved with this project for without them, this project would not have gone as smoothly as it did, nor would have looked as great as it does. So without further ado I present to you, The Phoenix Dancer.

JalenTakesPhotos.com

Music:
"Station"
Artist: Låpsley
Produced by: Låpsley
Album: Long Way Home

Tech Specs:
Panasonic Lumix GH4
Lens - Lomo 50mm
Lens - Jupiter 85mm
Lens - Tamron 28mm
Lens - Lomo 12mm
Accessories - Gimbal
Editing - Davinci Resolve

Shot, edited and colored by myself(@JalenTakesPhotos)

!All photos and videos are mine, unless otherwise noted!