Salsa Madness!
Filming a flash mob is not an easy task. Everything is happening so fast, and before you know it it's over. Filming a dance flash mob, where a group of 50 people or so twist, turn and gyrate around quicker than you can follow with your eyes is even harder. Filming a salsa flash mob in Manchester city centre, with its unpredictable weather (and light) conditions and a group of salsa addicts from La Suerte Dance School, is a proper challenge.
One thing we wanted to achieve in this film was to not just stick to conventional event videography, but to add our own little spin to it. This is why our brilliant director and salsa enthusiast herself, Matylda Wierietielny, planned out the intro sequence with the amazing Margot Robert-Dubreuil. We probably had the most fun anyone’s ever had on the top tier of a magic bus, as Margot exceeded all our expectations with her comedic talent and wild salsa moves.
As for the flash mob itself, we decided to plan it all out as much as we could. We would cover the event from 5 different angles, using 4 DSLR cameras and 1 GoPro, and the help of talented freelance videographers Maria Fernandez-Pello, Giulia Mattei and Adam McGrath. We rehearsed filming beforehand, divided the tasks, decided who would get what kinds of shots, synchronized all cameras' settings, and collectively hoped that none of the dancers would twirl into any of our camera operators, and break a limb or a lens. We wanted to be in control as much as one can be while filming in a documentary style. We were a bit nervous about the fact that if something goes wrong we can't yell CUUUT, DO IT ALL AGAIN! But this is the whole point of a flash mob, what's done is done.
All of that said, it went well. Nobody was injured, no major technical issues and we had fun all along. There were some problems, as there always are. The light contrast caused by the fact that the dancing crowd was partly shielded by a concrete roof and partly brightly lit by sunlight was a real pain, but persuading a big crowd of dancers to move to a different spot was not a tempting solution. Thank God for Adobe Premiere and its many colour and light correcting tools! Problems like this were also mitigated by the fact that we ended up with 5 sets of footage to put together in the edit.
In short, making a flash mob video is like participating in one, it's fast, intense, crazy and after it's over it feels good!
