Photos: videographer

[musicgal23]

Can anyone please recommend a professional or semi-professional ballet or dance videographer in the NYC area to make a tape to be sent along with regular admissions materials for college applcations? I hope to find someone who is experienced, and this video will be used just to supplement my daughter's application and possibly get some scholarship money, not as an audition tape for consevatory-type programs.

Thanks!

[G]

Can anyone please recommend a professional or semi-professional ballet or dance videographer in the NYC area

Is Connecticut considered in the NYC area? My geography is not very good. There is an excellent dance videographer in Connecticut who is a member of this forum. If she doesn't respond in a few days, perhaps she can be PM'd or e-mailed to call this post to her attention. I'll keep an eye open.

 

G

[Victoria Leigh]

I will send her an email, G.

[musicgal23]

I will send her an email, G.

Many thanks for the help- I will keep looking for any responses!

[Amy Reusch]

this video will be used just to supplement my daughter's application and possibly get some scholarship money, not as an audition tape for consevatory-type programs

 

I'm not clear on the purpose of the video you're looking for... is she not applying to a conservatory type program? Is the tape then rather to indicate that she will be an asset to the university because of her outside interests, in more or less the way a student who has lived abroad might be more desirable than someone with equivalent grades but has not ventured forth and brings no more to the university culture than the average run-of-the-mill? Or an outstanding athlete might get a scholarship even if they weren't applying to the athletic program?

 

I believe that if it's an audition tape, it doesn't need to be a slick (i.e. "expensive") video shot with broadcast equipment and theatrical lighting, etc... so long as it's held steady and it's easy to see the quality of the dancer.... sure, framing could perhaps flatter a little, but really, I think the auditioners will be able to see the level of the dancer's training and physical potential from a simple home video... just as they can tell a great deal from an audition class without requiring a solo stage performance.

 

However, if you're trying to "promote" your dancer daughter to people who are outside the profession, perhaps you might want to go the extra distance. Just be warned, it gets more and more expensive to get smaller and smaller discernible improvements in quality. Frankly, if that's the case, you'd want to be investing in a lighting designer as well as a dance videographer. (cinematographers usually are the lighting designer, but dance videographers generally are hired for their ability to frame theatrical productions lit by bonafide theater lighting designers and tend not to have the same skills/equipment).

 

There's a section on videographers in my currently haphazardly maintained Dance Links: Dance Links: Miscellaneous Resources: Videographers

 

and there's several videographers listed on NIPAD's resources list

 

However, if you are in NYC, I would recommend looking into DTW. I haven't checked it out in a good 15 years or more, but DTW used keep a resources binder with dance videographers' resumes on hand.

 

Penny Ward or Johannes Holub might be able to help you.

[Victoria Leigh]

Original poster posted the following, but I think hit the wrong button and it came to me as a reported post.

 

Post by musicgal23:

 

Thank you so much for the help- and yes, the video would be just to increase her chances of acceptance into a regular college (not consevatory as she also plans to do company auditions this year, her first choice!) or a good school where she will not major in dance but perhaps has a decent dance dept. and will consider her for scholarship money as an incentive to attend that school. Therefore the video doesn't at all need to be professional quality. I can use a studio at her ballet school and am not worried about the lighting, just the quality of the video in terms of distance and movement. My daughter will dance one of the many variations that she knows and a short self-choreograhed piece. I just have had no luck in the past with "parental video quality" if you know what I mean! I will look up the links that you suggested and maybe if any experienced parent videographers have any other ideas or want to do it themselves, they will e-mail a response! If anyone who reads this wants to suggest good colleges for both biology and ballet that would be a help as well. Thanks again!

[musicgal23]

Original poster posted the following, but I think hit the wrong button and it came to me as a reported post.

 

Post by musicgal23:

 

Thank you so much for the help- and yes, the video would be just to increase her chances of acceptance into a regular college (not consevatory as she also plans to do company auditions this year, her first choice!) or a good school where she will not major in dance but perhaps has a decent dance dept. and will consider her for scholarship money as an incentive to attend that school. Therefore the video doesn't at all need to be professional quality. I can use a studio at her ballet school and am not worried about the lighting, just the quality of the video in terms of distance and movement. My daughter will dance one of the many variations that she knows and a short self-choreograhed piece. I just have had no luck in the past with "parental video quality" if you know what I mean! I will look up the links that you suggested and maybe if any experienced parent videographers have any other ideas or want to do it themselves, they will e-mail a response! If anyone who reads this wants to suggest good colleges for both biology and ballet that would be a help as well. Thanks again!

Thank you so much for the help- and yes, the video would be just to increase her chances of acceptance into a regular college (not consevatory as she also plans to do company auditions this year, her first choice!) or a good school where she will not major in dance but perhaps has a decent dance dept. and will consider her for scholarship money as an incentive to attend that school. Therefore the video doesn't at all need to be professional quality. I can use a studio at her ballet school and am not worried about the lighting, just the quality of the video in terms of distance and movement. My daughter will dance one of the many variations that she knows and a short self-choreograhed piece. I just have had no luck in the past with "parental video quality" if you know what I mean! I will look up the links that you suggested and maybe if any experienced parent videographers have any other ideas or want to do it themselves, they will e-mail a response! If anyone who reads this wants to suggest good colleges for both biology and ballet that would be a help as well. Thanks again!Thank you so much for the help- and yes, the video would be just to increase her chances of acceptance into a regular college (not consevatory as she also plans to do company auditions this year, her first choice!) or a good school where she will not major in dance but perhaps has a decent dance dept. and will consider her for scholarship money as an incentive to attend that school. Therefore the video doesn't at all need to be professional quality. I can use a studio at her ballet school and am not worried about the lighting, just the quality of the video in terms of distance and movement. My daughter will dance one of the many variations that she knows and a short self-choreograhed piece. I just have had no luck in the past with "parental video quality" if you know what I mean! I will look up the links that you suggested and maybe if any experienced parent videographers have any other ideas or want to do it themselves, they will e-mail a response! If anyone who reads this wants to suggest good colleges for both biology and ballet that would be a help as well. Thanks again!

[Amy Reusch]

Therefore the video doesn't at all need to be professional quality. I can use a studio at her ballet school and am not worried about the lighting, just the quality of the video in terms of distance and movement

I think you want to look up Penny Ward.

As far as using a studio at your daughter's ballet school... I don't know what school she goes to, but you should try to do it in as deep a studio as you can, so that the camera can get as much of her as possible. I find shooting from the dancer's eye level in the studio tends to give the best line... shooting from too low can make some things look nice but tends to skew the arm lines in arabesque... Also, a wide angle lens or adapter is a must... not just to be able to get all the dancer in, but also to add depth to the scene.... and doing it in a studio with as little clutter as possible (as the scene becomes 2-dimensional, all that "background" stuff becomes equal with the subject). I find that quick movement tends to lose the most on video while big slow adagio line-emphasizing stuff is sometimes works better on video than in real life (depending on whether the videographer is sensitive to it when framing the subject). I don't know if that will affect what variation she chooses, but I thought I might mention it. Back in the stone age when I lived in NYC, there were a couple of theater spaces that would rent out cheaply ($20 or $30/hour) with minimal lights for video purposes... [A little stage light and a blank background make all the difference.] Nikolais-Louis was one, DTW another... It made a big difference from trying to shoot in a studio... if you can locate such a space, it would make a serious difference. Truly worth the cost. Ask Penny Ward, she might know if there are any spaces are still doing this. There may be a university that has a black box space you could use on a Monday.

 

Good luck!

 

 

 

[and thanks for the compliments, you two!]

[Amy Reusch]

If anyone who reads this wants to suggest good colleges for both biology and ballet that would be a help as well.

 

Ummm... I don't know if it is still the case, but... when I to SUNY Purchase back in the late 70s/early 80s, there was a guy outside the department who was a pre-med bio major but was allowed to take department classes and performed in a Sallie Wilson premiere with the department... he went on to med school... Still I think your daughter is much better off finding a college that is good for biology located near a city with decent ballet classes and not bother to try to find a college that is good for both... perhaps she wants a traditional college campus experience rather than an urban college, but truly, I think the classes would be better in a major city if she's not looking to do a conservatory program.

 

Also, I remember talk at the time about how with a small bio program with few pre-med majors, the faculty supposedly really worked to get their pre-med students accepted into med school... I don't know your daughter's interest in biology, she might find a smaller program more in her interest than one with huge enrollment.

[musicgal23]

Dear All,

 

I just cannot begin to say how grateful and relieved I am to have found such nice people who can give an anxious ballet mother some much needed advice! I thank you for the video-specific advice, the list of videographers and also for the college info. This is exactly what I and my daughter have been thinking, namely to locate her in a good college (and I appreciate the mention of a small bio dept. as possibly being helpful) where she might take either company open classes or high-level ballet school classes in her spare time. I had naively thought that these two disciplines would co-exist at a high level in many colleges but I have found out that is basically not the case. Of course, as she has reminded me several times, this is the fallback plan if she doesn't get a job! But if the love of dance is strong I think it will find a way to express itself and so rather than limit the options we will try to open them up.

 

Btw, she attends BAE in NYC and is happy as a clam there! Thanks again..

[Guest Chedva]

Does she want to stay in New York? If so (and pardon me if you've already researched these), you can't get any better for colleges than Columbia/Barnard (both of which do have dance departments, but I don't know about the quality), NYU, or Fordham (whose dance department is modern-based and affiliated with Alvin Ailey).

 

In Baltimore, check out Johns Hopkins, which recently acquired the Peabody Conservatory. I don't know about the Conservatory's dance program, but Hopkins does have a fabulous biology department (not to mention medical school, public health school and hospital). Hopkins' sister school is Goucher College, which has a dance program. When I went to Hopkins during the stone age, I was able to take any courses at Goucher that Hopkins didn't offer, which might include dance. And I recall a thread on this board about dance programs in Maryland for adult dancers.

 

Good luck on all counts!

[Amy Reusch]

I would like to hear what your experience was like making the video and what sort of reception the colleges gave it? Would you be so kind as to post this info when you're at that point?

[musicgal23]

I'd be happy to report my experiences, probably sometime late in the winter I should have some results, thanks again for the info and the interest!!

[musicgal23]

Hi, All,

 

I couldn't decide which forum this belongs so please feel free to bump me if it's better somewhere else. This is a combo college-video-from-the-front report for all who are interested. I helped my DD make a studio video last fall in preparation for college applications. This year was tremendously stressful for her, it's almost decided now, and here are the results:

 

9 college applications (not to conservatory programs, just some with decent ballet classes and some just very good schools plus a few safetys)-

8 acceptances + 1 wait list

1 of the acceptances was totally unexpected and I wonder if it happened because of the videotape that we submitted. This college (Duke) has a reputable dance dept. and my DD was accepted and will visit it next week. It's impossible to know how big a part the video played in all this but I just believe it can't hurt to try this method. I also wrote to each school in advance of the application to make sure that if DD didn't major in dance (she wants to major in biology when she finally attends college) that she would be able to take the highest level ballet class so she would not lose her mind! Most said that as long as she came to class and auditioned the very first week (and provided there was space) that she could dance along with the majors but just not do the majors-only performances.

 

The college route was a safety-net approach as DD really wants to dance professionally, therefore she has also done many auditions, both for companies and summer programs. She plans to defer college for 1 year, take an appreticeship and see how things work out.

 

The stressful part is the lack of time for her. Between senior year classes, college applications, Nutcrackers, winter showcase and ever since January the endless succession of auditions (and now rehearsals for end-of-year performances) it's amazing she has not lost her sanity. For all who dare to go this route it's probably worth it, but just realize that it's important to have a parent(s) who is willing to not only be very supportive but to actually do some of the mind-boggling paperwork necessary to apply to college, including the financial aid process. The results have well been worth it, I think she feels wonderful about all she has accomplished and I so admire her for the tremendous amount of hard work which will benefit her no matter what she ends up doing!

 

I wish all of you good luck as you help your dancing kids to find their way!

[Guest livebreathedance]

Can anyone please recommend a professional or semi-professional ballet or dance videographer in the NYC area to make a tape to be sent along with regular admissions materials for college applcations?  I hope to find someone who is experienced, and this video will be used just to supplement my daughter's application and possibly get some scholarship money, not as an audition tape for consevatory-type programs.

Thanks!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i know only of a place called www.ivycomet.com who are boston based but they may be able to refer you to somebody in NYC.They also have some cool dance pic's on the website of 2 of my favorite dancers !