Research Task - Napoleon Dynamite

In the film 'Napoleon Dynamite', there is a particular scene which stands out for me that and made me think about how I could implement it into our own dance video. The scene is in the final act of the film and shows Napoleon himself dancing to Canned Heat by Jamiroquai on a stage in front of his school and classmates. What we liked about this video in particular is how it invokes comedic aspects whilst still showcasing an impressive dance piece. This is something that we will be looking to do in our own video. We want people to come away from our video not having just watched a dance routine but to feel entertained by it as well as this is how you feel after watching Napoleon dance. Another aspect that we take away from this video is the costume design. Our plan is to have our dancer wear 80's clothes as back then clothing was typically more 'in your face' with its use of vibrant colours and styles. Napoleon rocks a plain t shirt with red trim on the neck and arm holes and red text in the middle of the shirt making the colours contrast, causing us to pay more attention to him. For the time being our costume is undecided so we are going to make a few mock-up designs as to what our dancer will be wearing. The third and final point that we take from this video is that of how we don't expect someone who typically looks and dresses how Napoleon does to be able to dance in the way that he does. When we think of someone who is dancing to disco music we tend to think of tight spandex clothing, wristbands and headbands and maybe a big crazy hairdo so when we are given the complete polar opposite of what we expect to see, it actually makes us remember it more as we are given something that we are not anticipating. We think that by having our dancer dressed as a 'geek' from the 80's dancing to disco music in a modern kitchen then we will hopefully catch the viewers attention more than having him dressed in typical disco-wear. 

Dance Video Introduction

This past week we've been introduced to a woman called Rachael Palmer who is a professional dance choreographer and she's been going over some of the basics with us to help us develop our ideas for our dance videos. She's told us about what the 5 basic elements of movement are when choreographing a piece of work. These elements are Jump, Turn, Travel, Gesture and Stillness. There are also more advanced actions that are used in dance and these are Canon, Levels, Mirroring, Reverse and Slow Motion. We've spent the past couple of days looking at how we can use our bodies physically to portray different emotions through using the actions. For this project I have partnered up with Jack Gunn as we've both got a similar idea of what we'd like to do for our videos and thought that it'd make sense to put our minds together. Jack and I have been looking at a particular video that we have been referring back to as our 'go to' source. The video is the music video for Mint Royale called Blue Moon and consists of Noel Fielding playing a getaway driver waiting for his criminal friends to come back with the money. Whilst he waits, Noel plays a CD that blasts Blue Moon and he begins to dance using the things he has around him in his surroundings as an advantage. We like referring to this video so much because we're both big fans of Edgar Wright who directed the music video and are fans of the concept of the video itself. This video inspired us to think of our idea which is to take a mundane task and vamp it up using a fast-paced, quickly edited video and make it more enjoyable to watch. There are also elements of comedy in the Blue Moon video that we have thought about implementing into our video. At the moment we've both just been brainstorming household tasks that we can use in the video that our protagonist can dance to. We had George go through a small routine that we'd made up and I followed him with a camera just to get an idea of framing and it actually looked okay, it became clear that we need to focus mainly on the close ups of body parts when they move (e.g. if someone is tapping their feet then I would need to do a close up of their feet).