“Working together is cool because it’s almost like we have three different styles. We have mine, we have Mari’s and then we have the one together.”

-REMIXED: Keone Madrid, Mari Martin, and Christina Grimmie DS2DIO-

movementlifestyle:

Way to hit us with something fresh! Check out Mariel Martin’s latest video!!

xavieruniversecity:

In this second installment of the series titled “The Meeting”, we focused on Mari.  It’s not so much of a predecessor of the first short film PLAY or a sequel, but more along the lines of another “episode” focusing on another character.  There is a huge contrast from the first and second episode.  The first was more fun, fast and up beat; it kept you on your toes.  As for the second, the music had a mellow tone to the film, so the pace of the film is much slower than the first.  That was the challenge, how do you keep your audience attention from beginning to end with the pace being much slower?

Well, Mari had a great story to begin with.  We later teamed up to make sure we told the story in a way people can understand, as well as being impactful. In general, the story is a women struggling with how she sees herself by societies standards, and finds herself more at peace by just being her true self.  Originally the story was the “insecure” Mari looking in the mirror for the whole film, and in the mirror we see the “true” Mari dancing as a reflection while the “insecure” Mari watches.  Having the whole choreography as only a reflection seems so two dimensional, and that would be the easy route just to just split screen “insecure” Mari on the right side of the screen and the “true” Mari on the Left side with special fx.  I personally felt seeing two “Mari’s” with the “twin effect” for the whole piece will be too distracting to the choreography; I wanted to maintain the integrity of the dance because that conveyed the most emotion.  Again this is a Dance-short, so I felt the dance is a character of its own and the dancing had to be displayed to its full potential to show its full message.  So I decided to scratch that original plan and instead of seeing a reflection of Mari, I designed a shot where we go inside of the mirror as if we go into the world of the “true” Mari. Going into the mirror will allow parallelism with the “insecure” mari, and enabled shooting the choreography to be more flexible. This allowed the choreography to carry the film.

Visually I had to keep the audience attention.  With a slower paced song, I had to focus on emotions with visuals.  I then used color tones to interpret the story i.e. “color grading.”  When we first see the “true” Mari, I wanted to represent hope.  Notice that the color tone is more golden than some of the opening shots of the film.  That golden look allowed a brighter look.  Bright comes from light.  Light represents hope, which I wanted to depict the “true” Mari as.  As we later see the “insecure” Mari transform into her TRUE self, the ending becomes really brighter; that just symbolizes the big leap into the light.  This golden color tone was inspired by the movie DRIVE.  It’s totally a film that inspired me with cinematography.  Well, in this film, I noticed that the golden moments in the film were when the main character was happy.  It’s a dark film, but when its golden, its when the main character is in love.  I wanted to bring the Golden look to this film as well.  I also used a tactic used from the LXD.  They backlit the windows to accentuates the lines of the choreography.  The windows weren’t heavily exposed in the raw footage, so I brought out the exposure during post-production. 

Before

AFTER

You can do so much with a shot, and enhance it to give more artistic value.  When looking at the shots, I hope it doesn’t just SHOW you something, but make you FEEL something.  I want to take the next step to have lighting, color grading, and compositing to give more substance to a scene.  This stuff does require a lot of labor.  Constructing a shot has to be well planned out and executed.  So to all my future working partners who want me to direct, all I say is give me TIME, and… FEED ME. Haha

Epilogue:

We find out after Mari leaves her house, she went somewhere to read. It leaves us right where the first epilogue ended: Keone sitting down. DUN DUN DUN. I’m hoping you are putting together the “pieces of the puzzle.” This should reveal what’s leading us to the final conclusion of the series.

movementlifestyle:

theTOUR “Community” commercial: San Diego Edition

This video has much more meaning to it than what you see at first glance.  In that night that we put this together, there was more than the 5 hours of rehearsal, the choreography we had to learn, or the character we had to portray.  The meaning goes much deeper.  I’m writing this blog, to share with you what it was.

Let me take you back to the Southern California dance community before the Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, or any social networking days.  Where the only way to watch each other was being at the actual show, or watching it on DVD.  For any dancers that was around that time, they can tell you that they have a collection of DVD’s or even VHS from several of the shows.  Here was where you saw amazing teams like Culture Shock San Diego, Urban FX, Funkanometry LA, Unity, even before the Jabbawockeez were called Jabbawockeez, they were Mindtricks, and several others.  All great memories for those who were a part of that era, and great history to learn about for those who are a part of this current era.  

I can go on and on about this, but I’d like to dive into the San Diego dance community.  To me, San Diego has been a vital life line to our dance community.  Many of the styles, and creativity that you see today stem from SD’s past.  I’m sure many who were a part of the past generation and the current generation can agree.  As you saw in the commercial there were 2 people that walk out in the beginning.  One named KJ Gonzales and the other Anna Sarao.  You probably had no idea who they were or are a bit confused on what was going on.  

Anna, as most of us that know her will say, is the “Yoda” of our dance community.  She was artistic director for Culture Shock San Diego for a period of time and really changed the game with what she did with them.  They had such an all-star group of dancers and had several Jabbawockee members as well.  Today she still is very involved with our dance community, judging several of the dance competitions that you know about today.  She also is the co-creator of BODY ROCK.  

KJ, is a complete innovator of his time in the dance community and is a huge inspiration for some of the “new” styles that you see today.  He was artistic director for Urban FX(San Diego) and they completely affected the way people performed, choreographed, dressed, what songs they danced to, etc.  KJ’s energy, power, speed, and performance changed the game and it still shows in dancers’ work today.  He was my first dance teacher and mentor, and many of us today have learned so much from him.  Today he no longer dances, and is currently happily married(living like an old man :) ).

Several of the pieces that they created inspired me to start dancing and did so for many of the well known names that you hear about today.

Going back to the commercial you will notice they start by watching old videos of CSSD and UFX.  Then it transitions into current SD teams watching newer videos of Choreo Cookies, 220, and Super Galactic Beat Manipulators.  An intro to sort of pay homage to our past and how much they’ve influenced us, and a moment to be grateful for where we currently are.

Which brings me to my next point…

In our current day and age we have all the instant access you can ask for.  The ability to know what ones doing, where they are(scary), and, in the dance world, what all the latest dance craze is.  All this is available in the click of a mouse, trackpad, or touch of the finger.  Yet there still resides studio rivalry, unhealthy competition, a huge amount of individualism and more.  Some people are so focused on being the next big name, being the next big choreographer, or even the next big crew, when the word “community” is slowly drifting away.  Even today when I perform at a show or event in our California dance community I barely know any of the dancers that we share the stage with, when in the past everyone knew each other and it would feel more like a reunion.  Our current generation has so many resources that we have yet to tap into the best of it to benefit each other.  

In this commercial the part of the San Diego community came together on a scale like this for the first time.  The first time! And we’ve been around for MANY years.  Even though the scale felt large for us it is still small compared to how many of us dancers are in San Diego, let alone the world.  To me that night was even more special because as I looked around the room it wasn’t “big name” dancers that filled the room, or even people that have dance as a career.  It was ordinary people that have school, work, families, children, and more.  It showed that you don’t have to be the biggest name to make the biggest impact.  There’s power in numbers.  If we can come together studio by studio… team by team… city by city… then there’s no telling what can happen when we get to country by country, continent by continent, and planet by planet(haha kidding). 

In all seriousness that night did something very special for us and I’d like to challenge YOU to do the same for your community so OUR community will only benefit.  You don’t have to be famous or even have to have dance as something you’re pursuing. You just need each other. Whether that’s representing your city and coming to the mLtour, sessioning, or just taking class it all is effective. The SD dance community came together to make this commercial happen, imagine what can happen if yours does too!

 As said in this famous Henry Ford quote;

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Let’s come together and do exactly what the word “community” says… come unite.

Thanks for taking the time to get this far into my blog.  I know it’s long(I tried to make it as short as possible), but I hope you feel any type of motivation after reading this.  I’m sure I’ll see you somewhere along the journey :)

Godspeed

-Keone

I seriously couldn’t stop smiling the whole time while watching this.  I appreciate this commercial so much more after reading Keone’s words.  It is truly amazing what theTOUR is doing for the dance community.

movementlifestyle:

Keone Madrid’s last video on his Youtube channel!

BUT!

subscribe to his and mari’s NEW Youtube channel at www.youtube.com/keoneANDmari — no videos there yet but subscribe because they’ll be on their way soon!

I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us!

xavieruniversecity:

Here is a commercial I did for Movement Lifestyle promoting theTOUR.  For just one minute, this commercial was labor intensive.   Long hours were spent in front of my computer.

Supplement:

So the previous commercial I focused more on the point of view of a ordinary dancer.  That dancer wanted to prepare himself for theTOUR.  This commercial focused on the the choreographers preparation for the tour.  This approach had to be epic.  Marketing team wanted a gatorade/nike esque commercial, so I wrote a story about what if we can quantify brain activity of a dancer.  Metering things such as: imagination activity, creativity, musicality, technique levels, and etc.  We then see the choreographers (Keone Madrid and Mari Martin) in the process of putting something together and later come to find out that their “Motivation Meter” was at its full max “100%” when it came to looking at theTOUR poster.  These choreographers want to cook up something special for these events and I hope dancers will be excited for what these choreographers are going to bring to the table

some of my effects were insired by “Stranger than Fiction” and the opening title sequence to “Walking Dead”  and “breaking bad” (the erie grundgy texture).  Some other influences came from other video’s I see on vimeo.  

thanks again mL for pushing my limits. Also, thank you KEONE AND MARI for shooting this for me as a favor.  They took their time out of their schedule to make this commercial what it is

if you want info for the tour please visit, as well as register, at themovementlifestyle.com

GOD BLESS X

Gotta love X’s work!