PERSONAL YOU: Making Your Best Dance Video.

Want to make your best video souvenir of a Nutcracker performance? Student recital? Competition? Dennis Diamond not only personifies the word videographer, he has raised videotaping to a new art form. He tells you how to make your best dance video.

"I think the biggest mistake when taping a performance is to move the camera around after it has been set and focused," says Dennis Diamond, the dance profession's most famous videographer. "In the hands of an inexperienced person, or even an experienced videographer, changes in camera angles can often lose or omit important sections of the choreography."

Diamond, who twenty-two years ago pioneered the now widely used method of capturing a performance, attended the High School for the Performing Arts in New York City, where he studied jazz, tap, ballet, modern dance, and choreography. He danced professionally for five years, after which he wandered into the offices of a cable TV station and heard, "Well, you look bright; how about a job?" The result was a new career, and today his company, Video D, is a unique production unit that documents performances with a dancer-cameraman-editor as its director.

Here are some of Diamond's suggestions for producing a successful video.

IF YOU ARE A PARENT:

1. Get permission to in writing to tape from the dance teacher, school, or theater. Include all details--date, time, place, noncommercial reason for taping (such as personal enjoyment), and give assurance that the video will not be distributed for sale or for any commercial purpose.

The best time to tape is dress rehearsal when, it is hoped, the production will be a run-through with few stops. "Don't try to edit with the camera if you make a mistake or the dancers stop" says Diamond. "Don't rewind; just continue recording or you may erase what you have."

2. If there are professional dancers in the production, be sure to obtain a signed release from each of them to document their performances. Include the same details as in the permission statement from the school--date, noncommercial use, time, and place.

3. Set up a tripod at your standing height with your camera far enough away from the stage to include the proscenium sides and a little less than the top curtain (this placement is usually about midcenter in the audience or no farther away than thirty feet). Make sure that the performers can be seen full-figure. Bring batteries and tape for two to four hours. Diamond recommends the HI-8mm, VHS, or Panasonic camera; a zoom lens; a Bogan tripod or one with a leveling device; and a bubble light.

4. Focus a bit lower than the center of the dancer's body or the legs will look too short. Place your tripod center stage and remain there even for a zoom shot.

Musical accompaniment is probably recorded, but if live musicians are present, it might get complicated when you ask them and the conductor for releases to record the performance. But be sure to ask, even for a rehearsal taping.

Remember that you are not permitted to tape during a live performance.

5. Graphics are an added cost. These are the written names, dates, and credits that usually precede the performance. Graphics, based upon your information, can be produced for your video by a local production house. Editing is also an additional cost, particularly if you have separate zoom shots. It is another service provided by a local production house.

"Another very important thing to remember," Diamond adds, "is not to be tempted to change the focus once the rehearsal has begun. Just keep the full figure of the dancer within the frame. Don't pan on people who are going offstage. I often compare using the camera to driving a car. As a beginner, you usually oversteer, until you realize that there is little to do except pay attention to what you have in front of you."

IF YOU ARE A TEACHER:

In order not to be swamped with individual parent videographers during a dress rehearsal or at any other time (this can become a touchy situation), permit only one professional or designated person with permission to tape the dress rehearsal or live performance. Be firm and make no exceptions. Enable the videographer to see the work at least once before taping the performance. Post a notice saying that copies of the final video will be made available on VHS at a nominal cost, usually about $25, including graphics, edits, and other visual material. An excessive price can lead to multiple copies being made from one purchased copy.

In addition, state that while persons may not tape from the audience during a performance, nor from the wings, taping backstage will be permitted.

By making it clear that there will be only one videographer with permission to tape gives you control over the quality of the performance, your image, and your reputation as a director and choreographer. The cost to hire a videographer is about $350. A package deal that includes editing and credits can be negotiated.

If the performance includes professional dancers or musicians, include in your contract with them that a videotaping will occur at the dress rehearsal, and that the conditions are noncommercial. Point out that having a professional videographer will show them to their best advantage, that the taping will be under your direction, and that it will be sold only to persons associated with the school. If you have a soloist who doesn't want to give you permission to tape, tell him or her that it's okay--you'll put in the understudy.

They usually become cooperative very quickly. This works almost every time.

For a taping session of a recital or concert using music other than that in the public domain, remember to obtain copyright permission from the publisher and for choreography other than your own.

An offer from a local television station to tape your production requires a contract with you. Permissions then become the station's responsibility.

The best backdrop color is light blue, rather than black, and full stage lighting, not an overly bright setup, illuminates best. However, white costumes often wash out and require a lower lighting adjustment for the taping at a live performance.

Inform your professional or designated videographer not to rechoreograph your work by looking for "interesting" shots. Tell him or her to focus and then not change anything after the setup has been made. Unlike photography where the photographers own their material, you own the tape exclusively.

Expect that some hazards of taping during a live performance will always occur--members of the audience unexpectedly stand up and spoil a shot; a wireless phone or other signal goes off; or a youngster gives a hearty response to something seen onstage.

A two-camera setup is not usually necessary for most noncommercial performances. However, if a two-camera setup is used, the cameras should be placed next to each other--one for wide shots; the other for close-ups. Different views allow for options in the editing process.

Be sure to attend the editing session and approve the graphics. (Diamond suggests recording the printed program as a simple and inexpensive way to document cast credits and changes.)

Diamond has invented precedures to deal with taping special aspects of dance. "When taping a tap dance performance by professionals," he says, "this form of dance cannot be captured in the same way because the emphasis is not on the full figure, but on footwork. Tap is all about detail." For tap shows he has invented mini-walls--a single television screen divided into several picture quadrants to give a live audience more accessibility to the footwork details.

In addition to documenting live professional dance performances, Diamond's credits as dance-video collaborator on concert, Broadway, and theater productions include Blue Man Group, Elizabeth Streb, Jazz Tap Ensemble, Ringling Brothers/ Barnum and Bailey Circus, Alwin Nikolais, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. But no collaboration was more complicated, successful, or unique than when he abandoned his usual invisible personal presence and, with his camera and screens, appeared onstage in Bill Irwin's Broadway show, Largely New York, in 1989. There, with live taping, some clips, and using hair-raising, split-second timing, Irwin and Diamond pulled off some bizarre effects in an evening of clowning and slapstick, all based upon Irwin's subtext of intellectual curiosity.

Despite Diamond's virtuosic capacity with video equipment, he is a purist because of his dance background--he doesn't tape facial close-ups, shots of someone's hand, nor does he rechoreograph a performance.

PLACES TO BUY EQUIPMENT

Steadi-Systems [phone] Circuit City [phone] Supreme Audio [phone] Stott Equipment Sales, Inc. [phone]