Final Dance scene from dirty dancing

The scene starts off with Patrick Swayze’s character Johnny Castle walking on stage towards Jennifer Grey  character Baby Houseman to the song “time of my life”. The song is being play through a record player at the side of the stage making the music dietetic. The lighting has a red/pink colour to it; the colour represents the love and passion between the two characters as they are dancing the love and passion could also be towards the dancing as during the film the two characters became close through dancing and the character Johnny dances for a living. As the two characters are dancing you can see their shadows on the back wall and there is only light on the characters and darkened areas in the background so a low key lightning has been used.

As Johnny walks towards Baby it is a long shot with full bodies of both of the charters on the screen, it soon changes to a medium shot when Johnny holds Baby as it is only shooting from the waste up. As the two characters start to dance it changes to a close up with just both characters head and shoulders in the shot. From then the camera angles switch from long shot to medium shot to medium long shots.

Shortly into the dance the camera starts panning around the dancing 180 degrees and then cuts to a view of Baby’s parents and sister, then cuts back to a long shot to see both characters full body’s while dancing.

Further into the dance you hear cheers coming from the audience which is still dietetic sound as it is coming from in the scene although you may not see the people making the noise. Shortly after the cheering and some well-choreographed moves the camera cuts to the parents and then cuts back to panning round the dancing. The angles continue to change between long shots, medium, close ups and long medium shots as the dancing continues.

When Johnny jumps off the stage it is a long shot but also it is in slow motion until it cuts to the dad and cuts back and you never see him land on the floor, it shows a close up of Johnny looking at Baby and then he continues to dance while being in a long shot, followed swiftly by a close up, keeping baby out of focus on the stage. It switches to long shots focusing on Johnny then cuts to a close up of Baby watching Johnny, then cuts back to long shot and long medium shots of Johnny dancing, soon to be joined by background dancers. When Baby gets lifted off the stage by the dancers and runs to Johnny and does the famous dirty dancing lift it is being paned to follow the action.

The different camera angles are used so you can see all of the dancing taken place and you can see the facial expressions of the actors in charters making you believe they are the characters doing the dance.