The House

Billy Elliot is one of the tonal inspirations to Sam and gives us a base of an authentic and hard-hitting representation of reality. Even though our family is well todo, their home doesn’t have to default to the super orderly and sanitized inspirational homesteads we see in a lot of mainstream movies. The family that has fallen on hard times emotionally and rather than financially may have a home that’s chaotic, cold, or not maintained as it once was. That can be as simple as an unmade bed or a pile of laundry to more descriptive signs of trouble, wedding photos removed from walls, empty fridge, personal items in boxes, etc. Those kinds of details can be presented in opening shots of scenes either as detail inserts or empty wides that then welcome a character. Comic books do really well with this kind of exposition and the use of top-down angles could be useful.

The office locations can be unpleasant for the characters to be in. Perhaps too fancy for comfort, impersonal or crammed with cubicles and fluorescent lighting. By contrast, the theater apartment represents old world and an old timer’s den, meaning soft tungsten sources, heavy drapes letting only leaks of daylight inside we can play up and romanticize with a bit of haze.

As the story progresses and the pair gets closer, we bring camera movement to life. As dance becomes part of their lives, their perception of the world becomes more animated as well. The house becomes alive again and becomes more kinetic (closing the fridge door with a bump of a hip or twirling on an office chair etc.)

Flashbacks

The memories of how they met and Rafal’s childhood are shot in a style that replicates the portrayed era in film. The time when Rafal and Ewa met is maybe stylized like the end of Friends or Buffy the Vampire slayer as we remember it watched on a CRT TV. 4:3 aspect ratio. Hard rim lighting, blue night light and little too glamorous footlight. Dawson’s Creek, The OC, etc.

Rafal’s memories of childhood dance lessons with Victor replicate a VHS home video look but have surreal dreamy framing and perspective of things being bigger than life, as if seen from the perspective of a small child. Maybe a few oversized props and distorted wide angles could sell it, but nothing as wild as Gondry’s The Science of Sleep or Eternal Sunshine. Domowe Przedszkole was a slightly psychedelic and underfunded equivalent of Sesame Street, and we could make some kind of reference of that style or draw from childhood which may resonate with the Polish audience.

This is a great approach to theatrical lighting and leans on the tango tropes in relationship building. Baz Luhrmann has certainly made a notable mark on the dance film genre as a former ballroom dance teacher. A lot of dance scenes in Strictly Ballroom stand out to me the most for ability to find humor is sometimes over-the-top ballroom style.

A scene that came to my mind in regards to Ewa’s last dance is Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Nights performance. This is someone who bares their soul in a dance. It is also a good after hours informal rehearsal look, which I think it would be great to incorporate either in a scene between Victor and Rafal, or do a fake oner with our couple starting a dance blinded by the stage lights and scared of performing in front of a big audience, but at the end of the dance we see them dancing alone in the empty theater as if the world disappears when they dance together.

Another notable example of emotional dance sequence is from I, Tonya. Kinetic, breaking 4th wall, maintaining tension by including audience reactions.

Footloose has good dance silliness and authentic joy as well as surprisingly effective use of a truckload of loose glitter. It’s nice to see how the iconic shots like the trucking close up of the feet were recreated.

New version of the West Side Story looks really pretty and vintage optically but uses a lot more dynamic angles, inserts and moving camera shots than the original.

One of my favorite depictions of a talent show is in Carole and Tuesday. It’s very carefully recreated based on the tropes of the genre but also showcases all the emotional impact on the performers, the judges and the audience while also earning the performing cred from the viewers.

I think taking a closer look at some more successful martial arts sequences may be helpful in finding dynamic and effective ways to show our actors move, to convey the emotion and avoid bland, generic scenes. This essay breaks down specific framing, editing and performance techniques that have been developed by the likes of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee with great success. Overall while different in meaning, martial arts and dance share a lot of overlapping challenges to present on film and I think the former has been given a lot more resource and attention and deserves to be studied.