Should You Sell Videos of Your Dance Performances with a Second Audio Track for Commentary?
Tuesday night I saw Doug Varone and Dancers at Wolf Trap outside of Washington, DC.
It was great to finally see Doug Varone's company and I especially enjoyed Lux, which premiered last October at the Joyce Theater in New York City.
But every time after seeing a work I enjoy, I have the same reaction. I want to see it performed again - immediately. Or at least, I'd like a high-quality DVD version to watch at home. Even better, I would like the DVD to have a dual audiotrack. The first track would be for the music and the second audio track would be for commentary from the artists themselves or dance experts. That way I could watch the dance with the musical score, for Lux that would be Philip Glass' The Light, or watch the dance while listening to artist or expert analysis -- maybe the commentators could add a John Madden-type Telestrator for graphic overlays.
The Benefits of Dual-Audio Dance DVDs
From my standpoint, a DVD with the music and commentary would blow me away. If I could watch the entire Lux performance multiple times and hear Doug Varone talk about this piece for its entire length - maybe 15 minutes or so - it would give me so much helpful background in terms of thinking about his work and understanding how he approaches the creative process.
There really is nothing comparable to such an offering. It is possible that I could attend an after-performance talk, which would probably be fun and interesting. But it still is not the same as having a vocal guide describe what you're looking at while you're watching a recorded version of the actual dance.
Such a tool would be invaluable to dance newcomers who don't have a framework for thinking about or responding to dance. And it would be equally helpful, maybe more so, to people who never even go to performances because dance strikes them as an alien, inaccessible art form.
On top of these benefits, I think that there is money to be made for dancers and dance companies who produce these videos, whether they are distributed in DVD format or for are sold via the Internet.
Obstacles
But there are big challenges to launching such a project:
Licensing and Contractual Arrangements
Once dancers start selling digital dance content, a host of legal issues have to be dealt with to avoid problems down the road. First, the music has to be licensed so it can be included in the recorded video of the dance performance. And music rights must be obtained for both DVDs and online distribution. The use of royalty-free music would significantly reduce these costs.
Also, all parties to this creative process have to sign agreements or waivers of some type. Dancers, costume designers, lighting designers, set designers and even the venue might have to sign-off on this project. (When I was at the the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, I couldn't even watch some dance videos because I first needed written authorization from the venue where the works were performed - a real hassle, but a good illustration of the number of parties that can have a potential legal interest in an artistic project.)
Describing One's Own Work
Among choreographers and dancers there seems to be a lot of resistance or lack of interest in describing one's own work. I think many dancers take the understandable position that the dance should speak for itself. Last year I was at a performance of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Small Dances about Big Ideas at DNA in New York City. After the performance, dance company members talked about the work with the audience. One guy in the audience was really adamant that Liz Lerman describe what the piece was all about. Liz refused and asked the audience member to share his reaction to the work. In the context, a post-performance talk, I think many performers would have responded the same way that Liz did. They just danced. Why should they have to explain what they did?
But in other contexts, I don't think that a reluctance to describe one's work benefits dancers and choreographers. In the end, whether you explain your work in a detailed manner or not others will do it for you. Dance writers and critics will assess your work, and people who see a performance will discuss your dance with their friends. So why be at the mercy of other people's interpretations when you can set the framework for how the discussion proceeds? And what better way to share your thoughts about your own work than on a dual audiotrack of a performance video?
Video Production and Technology Know-How
In order to produce a dance DVD with a dual audiotrack, many steps have to be taken that require specialized expertize.
A good quality video has to be shot of a performance using one or more cameras. Lighting has to be optimized for the video shoot or the resulting video could easily be terrible. The video has to be edited and then prepared for DVD and/or Internet distribution.
A separate high-quality audio track has to be recorded by the choreographer and/or dancers, or independent commentators.
For Internet distribution and sales of DVDs and downloadable videos, an e-commerce system has to be implemented along with a fulfillment process. Plus, a marketing campaign has to be developed and launched.
Costs
The folks at Article19 always say I should have more specifics when it comes to issues like costs. But I don't at this point without doing research for a specific project. But as with any other endeavor, you can spend a lot of money or, alternatively, take a guerrilla-budgeting/marketing approach.
If you collaborate with a group of artists who want to see such a project through to fruition. And among those artists are musicians who write and play their own music, you can minimize or reduce to almost nothing many of your costs. You can shoot a performance with a single camera and thus simplify the editing process, and turning-out basic DVDs is pretty straightforward these days. Then you need to take advantage of low-cost distribution approaches for selling your dual-audio track dance video performances.
Hmmm....
Well, upon reflection, that's a lot of work.
But the Internet is huge. If you sell your videos in downloadable format - put aside the DVDs for now, the numbers can easily add up. If your two-video package (for downloads you have to sell two videos as single unit - one video has music and the other has commentary) sells for $2.00, how many copies do you have to sell before you make a profit? If you sold 5,000, you'd generate $10,000.
The one element that I believe is often overlooked is the sheer size of the online audience. If part of your overall marketing strategy involves constant efforts to grow as large an audience as possible for your performances and other offerings, the economics are dramatically reshaped. Yes, it's true that in a small black box studio that only so many seats can be sold for any given performance, which means that there is a concrete cap on total box office sales. On the Internet there are no caps. Your just replicating digital content that can be sold again and again and again.
Posted by Doug Fox on July 26, 2007 12:03 PM
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It's not quite the same thing, though technologically, it is a simmilar thing: There is a professional bellydance group called the "Bellydance Superstars" (put together by Miles Copeland the music producer) that has put out at least one performance DVD with two video tracks.
The first is kind-of MTV-is music video style editing, with a lot of camera angles, very flashy and exciting. The second is the same performances but with steady camera angles, fewer changes between cameras, etc. The second tracks were developed because bellydancers who bought their DVD's wanted to be able to really see the dancers' movements without the distraction of heavy video editing.
Anyway, I just wanted to give you an example of dance DVD's being made that more fully explore the cool things you can do within the DVD format.