TL;DR: I apologize, this is a literal essay. I really like dance, it's way hot. Facts. I get frustrated with the lack of it in videos, and how bad it often is if it's there. (Facts.) I'm going to give some examples of what I think good dancing is and some bullet point advice for anyone shooting scenes. I'm a photographer/content producer of the non-pr0nz type, so I can offer some advice that will increase the quality of the product scene without costing more in time/money/effort, hopefully.
Full longwinded post:
Hey. I'm a big fan of dancers and dancing, and instead of just asking for "more dancing" which I see other ppl do often, I wanted to provide some actual examples of what I mean, because it's not helpful to just go "MOAR! BETTER!". lol
There's some "bad stripper, stripping badly for 30 seconds" shots in lots of videos but very few scenes with good dancing - You've got studios like PlushiesVR which has Lilly Mays, who's a fun dancer and cute. You have VRQueens which isn't my taste (Does every scene that has twerking have to be a fish eye camera 5" away from the girl's butt? Lol) BUT they have girls who can dance, and I am very happy it exists because it's something!
I'm going to give a couple examples then some advice.
Examples of what I mean by "good" sexy dancers, obv it's not a fair comparison between porn stars who might dance at a hobby/stripper level vs. some of the best dancers around, so some of these are amazing dancers freestyling, some are amazing dancers doing choreography, ignore the fact that they're too talented this is just so you get an idea of what I mean by "dancing".
Twerking:
Pole:
Hip-Hop / Random
Not many people can just dance that well on command, but a lot of porn stars CAN at least dance a bit and nobody ever thinks of getting them to do it in a video which is nuts! Or at least some can sorta, mostly dance (Jasmin Luv for example isn't a bad dancer, there's a couple ok scenes of her dancing even if it's "absent minded stripper on a monday afternoon dancing to the same Massive Attack remix" style. Haha)
But what if you don't have talent that has actual dance skills? I hear you say. Easy! TikTok dances. They're simple and for pr0nz purposes, just as good as ridiculous dance skills. And 20% of the regular women I know can do some, and 80% of the strippers/models I know can do at least some of them.
Examples of less "skillful" dancing but 100% as good for sexy purposes:
This has major advantages too, because if you get any girls who can shoot a few minutes of dancing (dance is supposed to be fun and sexy, set up a camera and record, nobody's expecting a music video.) - you can cut 15-30 second clips of tiktok dances, Then you've got:
SFW video you can post anywhere.
Short form video you can upload as Youtube Shorts, which dwarf the rest of Youtube now in discovery. And TikTok is still the biggest video platform for INSANE discoverability.
If I was shooting a scene, I would:
Say you shoot a scene with talent that can at least dance at a tiktok level. Here's what I would do on a shoot I was running, I don't know how to use 3d rigs so I could be full of BS here but as a not-3d photographer/video guy here's how I hope it could be done:
Got any hip-hop/pop songs I can use? If no, then I google copyright free music and spend 5 mins picking the first not-crappiest song I can find, or better yet, if the talent is chill and helpful I'd get her to pick something while I was setting stuff up. Then it costs no extra time and doesn't slow me down.
If I can use the main, nice camera rig I will. If the 3d rig's lenses are fixed and ultra wide or focusing is tricky so you don't want to change it much, I'll stick whatever older/consumer 3d camera I have available in a far corner of the room, far enough to not have the "fisheye lens 5 inches away from her butt" look.
If I can use the main rig to record her dancing then I do, that's obviously the best possible outcome. But if I can't and I've got a cheap 3d cam I can use, I'll set that up because if the dancing is good then you can get away with a crappier consumer level "old" cam. Then I'll play some music and ask the model to bust some sweet moves while I'm doing all the behind the scenes getting ready stuff, she can do some moves while I set up stands, dial in lighting just right, all that stuff.
Now I've got a few mins of footage of her dancing - if it's good enough, it goes in the start/warmup part of the final scene. If it's not high enough quality, save it for a dance or bts compilation vid that I'll make with the leftovers of a few different shoots, or put it out as it's own vid.
At the same time, I velcro a phone to a stand or a wall or whatever, point it at the model, get it in 2d, so I've got clips for YT/TikTok
If I can work all of this into the normal job, it's a no-brainer. Delegate what you can. Have the model find a song, or have her find a TikTok dance to try. It doesn't even matter if she's that good at it, it's still sexy seeing a girl trying to figure out a dance if she's having fun doing it.
Key things if you DO add a few mins of dancing to a shoot:
Make sure you can see their whole body at least half the time without a fisheye close up - You don't NEED to be in their b-hole. haha
(Ideally) If you're using really really wide angle lenses, just move them back 10' and then go. Get rid of the fisheye effect. Obv in a small room or with locked camera setups you gotta do what you gotta do, but if you're using really wide angle lenses, just move them back 10' and go.
You don't need to use your best rig on the dancing. That's the thing with dancing, if the DANCING is good, you can get away with a cheaper/older cam that's easier to stick in a corner.
Don't have a girl dance the same way, in the same place, with the same song, with the same camera set up over and over! Jasmin Luv is an example of this - the girl can dance well enough, and there's dancing scenes in a handful of videos featuring her but somehow they took a girl who could dance and made 4 scenes with her dancing that are somehow unattractive. In this example to make this 500x better, you could:
Use a diff song each time. Get a shitty free hip hop track from some copyright free website, pick the first one you find, who cares - changing the song will at the very least change the dance automatically. Google "Copyright free soundtrack", there's many sites. They're full of shit music but like I said, even if you don't go looking for a great song, it's better than the same song twice.
Are they dancing w/ a pole? Take the pole away, or move them in the physical space to put them in a corner, or in a larger empty room, move the camera to eye level, move the camera to waist level, move the camera to average male height tilted down, change something. Any one of these changes is probably enough to make the dance scene you're shooting have value instead of subtracting value from the last vid and the next vid you shoot if you do the same thing several times in a row.
D- on't remove the audio and replace it with a song in post production! ARRRGHHHH. Use the same song, or the in camera audio hearing the actual song, don't replace it with something or there's no point to the dancing.
- Don't use rock songs or slow songs. That's personal preference, but usually it doesn't work well.
Ok that's more than enough writing. I know nobody's going to read all of this, but it never hurts to try!
