How To Light A Dance Music Video

I recently filmed a quick dance music video with famous dancer Marquese Scott. Here's how I pulled it off. 

Markquese was planning to come to Charleston and dance for a promo video for my product Hat Mask Clips. While he was here, I wanted to take full advantage of him. I thought it would be fun to film an additional video for his fans. 

The Fstoppers studio behind Patrick's house has been completely gutted in preparation of a full renovation. The creepy-looking space was the perfect moody set for this shoot. Using only 2 GVM 1000D Lights and some aluminum foil, I was able to light the entire scene. I set the key light and my camera's white balance to 3600k and the background light to 5600k to create a blue tone. To create god rays, I used a cheap smoke machine

I learned a lot about the dance industry for this project. I wanted to go all out and make a complex edit, but Marquese told me that if his fans had their way, there would be no edits at all, and every video would be a single take showing his full body the entire time. We filmed 4 different takes with multiple cameras but in the end, I decided on an extremely simple edit cutting between only 2 angles. This video was filmed entirely with the Sony A7S III

Lee Morris's picture

Lee Morris is a professional photographer based in Charleston SC, and is the co-owner of Fstoppers.com

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2 Comments

Man I love Marquese Scott's dancing and combine that with you guys being the top videographer's in the world and you have an amazing piece of work here. Love it!!

I don't know about top videographers in the world but thanks!