Dance Monsters - General Discussion

[Taeolas]

"Dance Monsters" is a new series on Netflix. They're releasing the eps in chunks, but the whole series should be available in another week or two.

 

The concept is similar to "Alter Ego" that aired a few months ago, but it is dancing based instead of singing base. 

Basically the contestants compete using MoCap suits so all the judges and audience see is the monster-personas, and not the humans under the CGI. 

 

I've been enjoying it so far, and liking it better than Alter Ego I think. 

 

Alter Ego was singing based, there is less movement and more focus on the face, which is an obvious weakness of the technology, and runs into severe uncanny valley problems. 

A dancing competition has more full body movement, which hides a lot of the valley issues. It also lets them get away with wider shots that also hide the limitations more. 

 

So has anyone else checked this out yet? 

[Taeolas]

Some thoughts on the episodes and contestants. 

So far, I'm liking the format. The eliminations are coming fast, but it keeps things moving.

I do like that they are keeping everyone's identities secret through out, to the point that the practice scenes are using the monster-forms, and even background photos (and grandparent photos) are altered to put the monster forms in. 

It took me way too long to realize the Green Room only has room for 6 monsters at a time, leading to a pair getting 'cut' during the last episode. At first I thought there was a problem with Beti and Chester's act; but now I realize they could only do 6 monsters in there at a time AND they were probably saving on the Fur budget. 

Judging feels a bit stale; too many comments are basically "give me a bit more energy" or "give us a bit more complexity". 

Grummy and Hammer are by far the front runners of the competition. Both of them have fully embraced their characters and incorporated that into their dance styles and it shows.  Everyone else are decent to good dancers, but few of them seem to have hugged their character like Grummy and Hammer have. 

It'll be interesting to see how the powers come into play in the next episodes. Both how the powers fit in with the mocap motions (especially something like flight) and how they incorporate the powers into the characters. Powers are clearly Flame's chance to shine. 

[Midwestern Lady]

I binged this today when cleaning out some closets.   The music was good and I oddly really enjoyed the dancing.   My only criticism was each round of judging was "the hardest one ever".    I enjoyed the light hearted spirit.  

[Taeolas]

Spoiler for the ending...

 

Spoiler

Grummy was by far the best for this series. He was a good dancer, but he also embraced the "Dance Monster" concept and ran with the Grummy character as well. 

He rightfully got dinged a bit for not making the most of the Super Power dance off, but he was never really at risk. 

His final dance off with Chester was good, but even I noticed Chester's movements were a bit repetitive while Grummy seemed to shake things up each time. (I think it was Chester in the finale? Been awhile and sadly there's no wiki page for this series)

 

Hammer was probably his only real competition. Hammer IMO did better with the cloning powers than the judges acknowledged, and like Grummy he embraced the character. Loved how he was 'swimming' most of the time and not just walking/moving from set to set. 

 

I hope Netflix will do another round for this. Now that the tech is in place, it should be a relatively cheap show to produce, and it's fun to watch. And as I noted above, the Uncanny Valley effect isn't as bad as it was for Alter Ego. (The Uncanny Valley only really kicks in when they do the talking head segments before/after the dances when it doesn't really matter)

[SnarkShark]

I forgot that Alter Ego was singing.  I actually thought this was somehow the same show.  

What I want to know is how that tech looks live, at the taping, on the stage (to the live audience).  I mean it's all too easy to make things look good in post-producion. 

I hate that they even do stuff like the fake reveal, where the "real person" appears on the stage after a CGI dissolve.  Where common sense tells you they just stopped the shot, did a replacement, then told the audience to react like they didn't see the person there until after the CGI.  What baloney.  It certainly makes you suspicious that nothing we see on screen actually looked like that on the day.   I mean after the COVID episodes of shows like The Masked Singet I even question if that's a real audience.  Let's say the CGI they see live is like 20% of what we see in an episode, and actually just on a big screen instead of projected in a 3D space, like they imply.   Would a live audience go that nuts seeing that?

Edited July 4, 2023 by SnarkShark