[8/1/2010 SteppersUSA Daily News]
Making Steppers Contest DVD's
By Markie Bee
National Chicago Style Steppers Day
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There's a certain amount of work involved in making a DVD. Some of the tasks are easier than others. For example shooting the video for a steppers contest video is a pretty straight forward job. Try to keep the couple that's competing on the floor in frame as well as you can, stay with the action, and keep the shot as tight as possible.
Steppers want to see those full body shots because they use the video not just for entertainment, but also for a learning tool. They may be competing in the next contest against you so you have an opportunity to see what they can do on the floor or you want to see how they executed "that move" and using the video with extreme close ups is the ideal tool for examining the mechanics of the move.
Unlike other types of shoots, there's not a lot of scripting, and the shooting schedule is pretty much defined by the contest. The audio is generally a real pain because most club DJ's don't understand about (or care) about fidelity because they're just looking for loudness (shame on them).
I'm not talking about a big production like this years World's Largest where there will be some big

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names as host's and live musical entertainment. That's not a one or two camera shoot. For proper coverage, you would need a stationary camera for wide shots, an isolation camera on each couple on the floor, and a Foley camera (up on a jib for those overhead and crowd shots).
The real work on any DVD is in the editing and to do a local contest DVD, the editing is just as straight forward as it can be (sort of like the shoot itself) on a local contest. It's a matter of building chapters out of each performance, discarding the pre and post roll footage, adding titles along with a little spit and polish. For the most part this type of editing is boring compared to working on an instructional video or a multi-camera job.
There's no synchronization work and as I mentioned a couple of times before, it's scripting is dictated by the flow of the contest so there's a defined beginning and end to each chapter so you line them all up for the DVD and with a little menu work and transcoding, you have a DVD with video that's much better than what you may find on You Tube or Facebook.
I just finished the two DVD set from the J.E.P. Productions Hotter than July steppers contest and the total editing time was less than eight hours. I'm also working on an instructional DVD for a client and I've already invested more than three times the amount of time in editing and creating the DVD and it's not done yet (but is still on schedule).
The J.E.P. Productions Hotter than July steppers contest is now on sale and can be ordered online here.
There are less than two weeks (13 days) until National Chicago Style Steppers Day. Many of the cities have already told me where they are having their events and you can find them in the steppers perpetual events calendar. I hope everyone will see the vision and help celebrate the dance on that day in what ever city they are in on the 14th of August.
 

What are you doing on August 14th? Please let me know!

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