We were tasked with creating a music video with sign language. Immediately, we knew that we wanted to sign the entire song. However, one of our challenges was thinking of how to best compliment the sign language.
We also wanted to tell the story of self-reflection - looking at it in two ways: internal and external. Internal self-reflection in the sense of how does one view themselves in their mind and external self-reflection being what we see when we look in the mirror. We quickly went to the drawing board on how to approach this.
SOLUTION
With dancing becoming a part of this, we needed to first and foremost understand and show that sign language is the main vehicle and that dance is there to compliment the sign.
A lot of time was spent on YouTube studying other videos for inspiration. Mainly, how do people incorporate sign language in music videos as well as looking for any videos where sign language and dance were blended together.
Because the focus was on the sign language, I had everyone that was a part of this video learn the sign. This would make sure that everyone was more focused and understood everything happening with this project. Once we had a firm grasp on the sign, I proceeded to choreograph the song. I made sure that in every step, to compare choreography with sign to ensure that there was no clashing between the two.
In the blocking stages, the same logic was applied - ensuring that the sign is in the driver seat while the dancers were in the passenger seat.
In order to create a sense of “uncertainty” and to immerse the viewer as they watch the video, we went for a handheld approach rather than using a gimbal. Having natural movement was meant to make it as though the viewer themself was reflecting - walking through their “mind”.
We wanted to somehow blur the lines between external and internal so we spent time in the choreography stages to swap the mirror with dancers and vice versa. The camera movement was also choreographed into the routine.