A few weeks back I was approached by my coworkers J.Wong and R.Patel about a quick shoot that could help promote the swing dance club at work and potentially be used for talent acquisition purposes. Most of the people in the club were in my old group so I thought it’d be fun. Totally blown away when I went to one of their lunch meetings to do some scouting but once the beat dropped they really started doing their thing! It was really impressive!

Concept-wise I went back to an commercial from way back in the day. I remember being in 8th grade when this commercial hit and around this time my core teacher started up a swing club at our middle school. Never was any good at it and I remember more than a few close calls with my arm being bent in different directions. Still, I always loved the vibe and feel of swing so I was looking forward to this.

Here’s some of the test footage for reference. The dancers were all improving and so it was a bit tricky but necessary to get them used to the idea of repeating improved movements since I’d be shooting with a single camera on the day of the shoot. They all went back and brushed up their moves and threw in some new ones!

On the day of shooting, SD was a little warmer than usual, hitting highs of 95*C. Even though we were indoors the heat made the floors a little sticker but everyone was still super excited. It’s super apparent they’re having fun and I’m just there hitting record. Finally, a little color correction warmed the shoot a little. I tried to emulate a little of the eye popping red that is in the music video for Cissie Redwick’s “Gimme that Swing” (link)

Couple more videos coming out soon in quick succession. stay tuned!