Recital - Solo dancer froze on stage

[Vince Pachiano]

Editing now - A dancer froze on stage for a good 16 seconds as she forgot her choreography. I shoot with 2 cameras, so I have both a wide shot and a close-up. I am considering two different edits:
#1 - Cut to the wide shot during the freeze. This acknowledges the incident.
#2 - Keep tight shot throughout, but totally remove the footage of the frozen dancer, and cross-dissolve as best as possible. It will lack some continuity, but removes the odd freezing.

[Andrew Smith]

Suggest asking the client if they would like to take advantage of the ability to negate the on-stage freeze by editing it out. This will help further sell the benefit of having two cameras filming a production, plus the extra bit of 'special' that comes to the table when you are the one who wins the work from them.

Use it to prove that their decision to hire you was the correct one.

Andrew

[Larrie Easterly]

That had to be tough on the dancer.

One thing to consider is how to handle the music track if you cut out 16 seconds. I can see cross dissolving the video. The audio makes it trickier to handle.

[Paul R Johnson]

Was the freeze at the very start, or pert way through? It could be better if it was at the start to just edit the audio to a point where a fade in works. In the past, the cure has been to use them walking on, then edit the pics together, then fix the audio - in the past I have even used a similar lighting state coming up on an empty stage as cover for what was really happening - BUT - this is a client decision, not one for you, because whatever you do will be viewed as wrong by others. Are you editing for everyone, or to save the dancer's blushes? May not be the same reason.