Saturday, May 2, 2009

Do-Re-Mi in Belgium

This video is about one day in a train station where everybody felt like dancing to the same song...



I first heard about this video from one of my teachers, and then I went home to watch it. It's very original and I think the idea is revolutionary. It makes everyone think that a musical was actually happening. When you see movie musicals, and you see all of the citizens and townspeople join in the songs it sometimes doesn't fit. Those people sometimes don't seem to have a purpose dancing other than to just be a part of a musical. For example, in the movie and play Mary Poppins, every at the racetrack starts to sing "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (and that's the real spelling, too). They don't really understand why they are singing except that it's a fun song and tune. They don't all personally know Mary Poppins, but they are just singing the song because it is fun. In this video, the same thing happened. People just joined in carelessly and did the choreography like it was a part of their daily life. A musical really happened. Everyone has a friend or two that break out into song randomly, but very few people have seen over a hundred people break out into song randomly at the same time and dance in unison. It was like a show choir but with real people.

I have two favorite parts of the video. The first part is when the kids start coming down the steps. At that moment the little ditty that the twenty or so people were doing becomes a big dance. It really makes the performance more gravitational as well. My second favorite part is the old lady dancing. The camera only shows her for a few seconds, but it is a very funny part of the video. The lady showed how much organization this performance took to rehearse everything. It must have taken hours to get everyone to move like that together and in unison.

I really like the idea of what these people have done. I decided that if I was ever to make a movie musical that I would film it in this manner. I'm not really sure of the specifics, but I think it would be really interesting for audiences to see a side of society that is almost not real.

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