A few months ago we identified Blake Calhoun’s gritty thriller “Miranda”  as one of the best mobile movies of 2018. Now the director is back with “First Dance,” a film that couldn’t be more different in terms of mood. That said, this short dance movie about a most unusual date, is as visually arresting as the Calhoun’s earlier work.  The interview that follows includes a number of moviemaking insights including one about creative casting.

Interview with Blake Calhoun

MMM: Is there a story about how you came up with this concept? A book we recently read on cinematography proclaimed that the mid-shot carries the burden of film storytelling. It gave many examples, but not one on framing the main characters from the waist down. Can you talk about that decision?

Calhoun: I’ve actually had the idea about doing a movie with only showing feet for a long time. Probably more than 15 years.

MMM: Tell us more.

Calhoun: I used to live in a condo that had a very low window that almost touched the ground and it faced out towards a sidewalk. It was in my living room and when I watched TV I could see people walking by but only up to about their knees. Sometimes they’d stop and talk and I’d wonder what they were saying. You could tell if they were mad or in a hurry or glad to say hello to someone—so I thought this would be an interesting (and challenging) idea for a film. Show only feet with no dialog. It took me a while to actually make the movie though.

MMM: How did dancing come into this?

Calhoun: The dancing part actually came to me as I was writing the script recently. Thought it would be a fun and natural way to show someone was happy. And it so happens my niece is a very accomplished dancer and so I got her to be in the movie. My niece is basically a professional dancer although she’s only 13. She’s been dancing since she was a little kid and so I asked her mom (my sister) if she thought she could do the choreography and she immediately said yes. She also has aspirations of a making films herself.

MMM: Could you describe how you worked with your niece?

Calhoun: I storyboarded the entire movie and figured out the music and created an animatic and sent it to her to watch. I gave her the different story beats in the dance sequence (and some ideas I had for pacing) and so with that and the music she came up with what you saw in the movie.

MMM: The soundtrack contributes a lot to the movie.

Calhoun:  It’s actually stock music, although stock music today is really great and the better sites for it don’t sound like the “stock music” we used to get. I licensed it through the Artlist. I went through dozens of songs until I found it. I knew I wanted to have the music up front so I made a point to get that done early. Typically on my films I use original score. Even some of these smaller short films I do, but on this one it would have been too involved and costly. And I really like the song I found.

MMM: How long did the shooting take?

Calhoun: About 2 1/2 hours. I used an iPhone XS Max and a Movi Cinema Robot gimbal so I could move quickly.

MMM:  Did you encounter any difficulties during the production?

Calhoun: Only that I did the shoot by myself.  I usually have at least one other person on the camera crew, but this time it was just me, plus my daughter who handled music playback on an iPad for the dancing parts. And that live sound was probably the biggest challenge. Because it was very windy, it was hard for the dancers to hear the music. The dance routine was designed to sync to the song, so they really needed to hear the music. I had planned on recording a lot of natural sound using a Rode VideoMicro on the camera. That set-up usually would work, but it was so windy the sound we recorded on location was unusable. That caused lots of Foley work in post-production. Pretty much every sound in the movie was replaced.

MMM: You mentioned that your niece was one of the dancers. How about the boy dancer?

Calhoun: Actually, that dancer was another of my nieces. She played the boy role.

MMM: She fooled me!

Calhoun: Since we were only showing feet and legs it worked out she could play that part. She’s also a good dancer.

MMM: Any other advice you can give us about shooting a dance video?

Calhoun: Get lots of coverage – lots of different angles and shot sizes. I shot 4K and edited in 2K so I could reframe (and save time on set). That way my wide shots on location also were my close-ups in post. I had them do the dances probably five or six times each, but it would have been good to have more footage, more angles. As an editor I always want more coverage. On the other hand, as a producer I always want to wrap on time.

MMM: I suppose planning ahead of time can help reconcile those two conflicting needs.

Calhoun: Yes. You can see that our making-of video.

To learn more about Blake Calhoun’s work check out his iPhoneographers YouTube channel.

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The editors of MobileMovieMaking.com have chosen “First Dance” as a Mobile Movie of the Week.