In 2020 Ballet Black, approached us to promote two new pieces. We had one day to film them in rehearsal, no costumes in a bare studio, yet we needed to give the ballets their own individual look. ‘Then Or Now’ features lyrical classical ballet and poetry, so stylistically we went for a soft, flowing look, using our steadicam to keep things light and etherial.‘The Waiting Game’ was still in development, so we went through and pulled out sections we thought might work well for a short promo.
Sadler’s Wells commissioned us to make a full multicamera recording of the stage show ‘Shoes’ as a marketing tool for other host theatres. We were then tasked with using some of this footage, along with vox pops we shot on the opening night, to generate interest amongst the public. We delivered this within days, which was critical as the show had already opened at the theatre.
This is one of many films we made for ‘Shoes’. It all started for us when we had an initial meeting with Kingsley Jayasekera, Director of Communications at Sadler’s Wells. Shoes was in pre-production, songs were written and work started on dance routines, but they had no set etc. Firstly we had to produce a short taster to pique the public’s interest, with dance and song pulled together with interviews. We had four dancers, two singers and a rehearsal studio for the day, the results can be seen below. From that day’s shooting we also produced some dance-only clips for on-site promotion.
Men Y Men is a contemporary ballet featuring only men, choreographed by Wayne Eagling and set to the powerful music of Rachmaninoff. Our challenge was to film a one-off dress rehearsal using three cameras, having seen the performance only once the day before. The staging was very dark and the dancers wore black slacks, we had to pull out all the technical stops to make this one work and it did work, fantastically well. A full-length film was produced, as well as this promo featuring an off-the-cuff interview with Wayne Eagling, who gave a brilliant insight into the world of Men Y Men.
Our second ballet for the ENB, this time a more traditional production of Cinderella. The film was used on their website as a teaser for the tour, a second film went out once the tour had hit its stride and the reviews were in. We also produced a broadcast film for distribution to regional television newsrooms and a full-length film for teaching purposes. All these films were produced from a one-day multicamera shoot and delivered in a variety of formats.
