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the vision of the dancers kept pushing to the front of ray thinking. And it was not too long before I started thinking constructively and in concrete terms of the production of a dance movie.
SETTING DETERMINES DANCE In analyzing the dance revue I had witnessed, it seemed to me that those phases which could be enhanced through a cinematic treatment had to do with settings and points of view — or camera angles. For some time I had been toying with the idea of doing a film which involved miniature sets and full-sized actors. (This was probably an outgrowth of my earlier and arduous work with puppets in One Summer Day.) It was only natural that this line of ininking would carry over into my plans for a dance film. Obviously, whatever settings and backgrounds were used would have to fit the costumes and dances used with them. Or, to put it the other way around, the dancers and costumes would have to fit the miniature sets.
There followed then a series of evenings in which I dangled odd bits of this and that in front of the camera viewfinder. as I tried to visualize dancers whirling among multicolored soda straws and the like. Finally a series of three thematic background ideas were worked out that seemed to promise a fair amount of success.
COOPERATION FROM ALL It was, of course, with a rather sheepish mien that 1 then approached Norma Rae and told her of my plans for a dance film built around thematic backgrounds. But she was most enthusiastic and we immediately began choosing costumes and talking over individual dance movements suited to the themes. (I may say that at this stage of things I had no crystallized idea of a story line; my primary aim was to develop all the poetry in motion possible by combining sets and dancers.
A shooting schedule was arranged and
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DR. LEON DALLIN, composer of film's original score, drills orchestra, as Turner and Mrs. Arrington check on costumes.
filming began. As always, the projection of the first roll of film on its return from processing was a thrill for both cast and crew alike. The results were much better than we had dared hope. The dancers were surprised no end to see the fabulous settings in which they danced. For the actual shooting had gone on in a bare gymnasium, with medium-beam photofloods focused on the dancers and away from the bare walls. Then the film was wound back in the camera and appropriate miniature backgrounds were superimposed on the same footage.
DRAMATIC THEME NEEDED
As we carried on in this way, it became increasingly evident that what the film needed most of all was a dramatic "Why?" for its dance fantasies. Without that it was a mere technical display of pyrotechnics — plenty of fireworks but with no reason for celebrating. It had much the same feeling as a musical chord without the quality note. It lacked that one vibrant element which would give meaning to all the other tones.
An obvious answer to this problem was to portray the dance sequences as the daydream of some girl who loved dancing. But it couldn't be just any girl. It had to be
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TO SAVE ON SETTINGS, all dances were filmed against dark end of gymnasium.