AFTER EFFECTS - IT'S A SHOCKER!

http://www.lumottulapsi.net/ENG/a0.html
http://www.lumottulapsi.net/trailers/LumottuTRAILERI_high.mov

The above example demonstrates a passable job in understanding how to integrate story telling and effects, with dance.

What is not quite so successful is shooting the dance to make it serve the whole idea.

A lack of talent in effective choreographic synthesis contributes to a distancing from the subject for the audience rather than effectively including them in the process.

It is sometimes interesting to feel that a moving image project started with the narrative and choreographic wealth inherent in the dance ideas.
This process can so often mine these ideas for all of their poetic, metaphorical and iconoclastic potential and imbue them within the context and disciplines of all of the other essential elements, informing them all of eachother and providing a purposeful integration or "voice".

Once the proverbial lily has been produced, then can the creative processes be directed towards a set of directorial decisions on the extent to which gilt need be applied.
Often we encounter the ad hoc shoehorning of dance ideas into a series of After Effects driven storyboard designs. Too often these sophisticated additions obscure, ignore or merely downgrade the crucial place of clear choreographic narrative design and intention, be it ever so abstract.

The results are, at best an alienating ambience to the work and a sense to the audience, even those members less informed of the techniques behind the work, that perhaps this was not a deliberate choice by the film makers.

In fact the more elegant the effects, the more the weaknesses in the seamless continuum between choreographic and cinematographic ideas become highlighted.

The above clip demonstrates above average production values, a good sense of scale and a clearly strong metaphorical line, which come as part and parcel of the source material in this case " L´ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES". (See below).

At any point in a "remaking" process, it is incumbent on the creative direction to establish new ways of seeing which must inherently or overtly, contribute to enriching the source idea.



From Wikipedia
" L´ENFANT ET LES SORTILEGES"
Background

During World War I, the Opéra de Paris director Jacques Rouché asked Colette to provide the text for a fairy ballet. Colette originally wrote the story under the title Divertissements pour ma fille. After Colette chose Ravel to set the text to music, a copy was sent to him during the time he was serving in the war in 1916; however, the mailed script was lost. In 1917, Ravel finally had received a copy and agreed to complete the score, humorously replying to Collette, "I would like to compose this, but I have no daughter." Due to contractual obligations, Ravel finally was compelled to complete the work by 1924. Colette, believing that the work would never be complete, later expressed her extreme pleasure that the work was done, believing that her modest writing had been raised beyond its initial scope. Now officially under the title of L'enfant et les sortilèges, the first performance took place March 21, 1925 in Monte Carlo as conducted byVictor de Sabata with ballet sequences choreographed by George Balanchine. Ravel said of the premiere production:
"Our work required an extraordinary production: the roles are numerous, and the phantasmagoria is constant. Following the principles of American operetta, dancing is continually and intimately intermingled with the action [...and] the Monte Carlo Opera possesses a wonderful troupe of Russian dancers, marvelously directed by a prodigious ballet master, M. Balanchine. And let’s not forget an essential element, the orchestra