Last saturday we did a videoshoot with the dancers from dancing school NVHer. It was a Damn Good shoots… once the cops were gone. 

Some Damn Good dancing

All’s well that ends well. But some starts suck.

When planning for the shoot we originally wanted to use a small amfitheater in a local park as the location. But as it started to rain (as predicted) right before the shoot, we decided to move to an alternate location. A parking garage that I have used before. It has a roof and a kind of urban feel to it and there aren’t to many cars parked giving an open space to work with.

Under normal circumstances that is.

This time however, when I got there 30 minutes before shooting, I found an almost full parking lot, surrounded by ugly fences. Apparently the building above the lot is now used as a Covid testing centre. Just to make sure I walked upstairs to check If I could shoot in the parking lot, like many times before. But alas, no permission was granted because of covid restrictions. Kasper arrived, just in time to hear the bad news.

So on to plan C.

“Terrorists spotted”

There’s an highway overpass I sometimes use in case of bad weather when I need to shoot outside anyway. This time when I pulled up there, it was a mess.

A huge dumpster truck and a mountain of sand were covering half the place. On the other side of a small stream of water however was a large, sand covered plain, beneath the overpass. Not easy to get there though.

We had to walk over a fallen tree (in the rain) to reach the other side and then through some thick thorny bushes. With all my, not so cheap, camera and light gear.

Finally I got to where I wanted to shoot with all my gear when I turned to see if the dancers had arrived yet. They did. But so did a squad of some 6 police officers, multiple police cars and police motorcycles. I saw some officers questioning Kasper. Not sure of what was going on (was I trespassing?), I decided to move back there, crossing the falling tree over the water once more where one officer quickly intercepted me asking me for my I.D.

“Blowing up an overpass, are we?”

Turns out some local resident spotted ‘suspicious looking characters’ walking to the overpass with bags and returning without the bags. Like the highway between the Dutch towns of Purmerend and Hoorn is a prime terrorist target.

By that time the dancers had turned up and Kasper pulled out some Damn Good cans to show what we were working on. Convinced that the only shooting would be done by my camera the cops left and we could finally start shooting. At least after all of the dancers also crossed the tree-bridge.

Of the four dancers only one slipped and fell into the water. Too bad I didn’t have my camera out for that one.

Let’s Dance

I started off with some solo video shots for the intro. After that the ladies did their choreo a couple of time so I could make a master shot and different close ups, panning shots etcetera.

Once done with the material I really needed, we did some solo pictures, groep pictures and extra video shots using flares on the back ground. We thought it was wise to use the fireworks at the end of the shoot in case of worried residents calling the cops again.

The video will follow soon. For now I can share some of the pics I shot.