Developing entertainment content; using the power of video production
When you are approached to create content for the world-renowned MSC Cruises, you take a step back and count your blessings. Still, when you are told you are working with the incredible Flavia Cacace Mistry to develop a dance class concept to be played on a 40-ft LED wall, you realise the scale of the task.
Six months after our initial discovery call, through to an incredible 3-day shoot and finally, to the content being launched on the ship, we can now share a little more about the journey of taking dance classes with a celebrity; on the screens of a cruise ship.
Flavia Cacace
You could argue that Flavia was and still is one of the most recognisable Latin and ballroom dancers. With her time on BBC's Strictly come dancing and her tenure as a professional dancer touring the UK with dance partner Vincent Simeone we knew that our time with her would be precious and her work ethic would be second to none - and we were not wrong. Flavia's poise in front of the camera and striving for excellence in everything she did shine through. Throughout the production process, we wanted to maintain the Dance with Flavia concept but develop a meaningful method to engage the audience to - Dance with Flavia.
flaviacacace.com
The brief
We were tasked with creating three individual dance classes that would be shown onboard the brand-new MSC World Europa; within their multi-disciplinary events space. These classes would be 45 minutes long and have to enable the viewers to learn the routines that Flavia had created. We developed a simple Multicam shoot logic that we could easily apply across the board with six cameras rolling to maintain a level of production value without detracting from the core teaching.
Alongside the primary production, we were tasked with creating numerous adverts and announcements that would be played onboard to entice passengers to join in. With complete script preparation and leveraging the video from the shows, these were 60 seconds long and prepared so they could be localised to various international markets as the ship moved around the world.
Finally, we were asked to ensure we had imagery from the shoot that MSC and Flavia’s team could use for marketing and editorial content. This was captured by our very own Nick Patel, who also doubled up as our runner for the three days.
Behind the Scenes
The Final Product
After 2terabytes of 4k data, we ended up with the three classes and the deliverable as we had precisely intended. Our clients in Flavia and MSC were both delighted with the outcome, and the quality of the work speaks for itself. Only time will tell if the audience has engaged with it, but with the recent years of remote fitness and online dance classes, we can only imagine that this new normal will take hold. The crew we put together worked well, with our friends Amy Smith (director) and Rowan (Crane Op) joining the cardboard family for this job. We take great pride in our crew, which shows in the quality of the output. In time we hope that MSC will need more localisation and more content onboard their ship that we at Cardboard will happily create and share as required. If you want to see the content, we sadly can't share it, so you will have to take a cruise on the MSC World Europa to see what we came up with.
Working with the team at Cardboard Creative made converting my real-world concept to video really easy. They looked after all the details and allowed me to bring the creativity I needed to the shoot.Flavia Cacace Mistry
