Inspired by Maceo Frost’s 2016 documentary, filmmaking duo Fatty Soprano & Shutterr introduce us to Marcus “Ademe” Parish Johnson, a man who credits his participation in Toronto’s Krump dance movement as a therapeutic release which has helped save him from the dark grip of depression. Watch Marcus’ story below, after which Fatty Soprano & Shutterr tell us how they brought this compelling dance reflection short to screen.
We met Marcus on set of a Hip Hop music video for Toronto artist Pages. The way Marcus was moving to the beat, brought an amazing energy to the visual we had the pleasure to film. We had an interesting conversation with Marcus about krumping and how we were all in love with the Raised by Krump documentary by Maceo Frost (which heavily inspired this project).
The way Marcus was moving to the beat, brought an amazing energy to the visual we had the pleasure to film.
Marcus shared a couple of personal stories, how Krump saved him from depression and dealing with his father’s passing. He uses Krumping as therapy and even teaches Krump to young teenagers to keep them away from the streets and gang violence. We knew we had to visually capture his story and share it with the world.
We chose an interesting skate park 15 minutes from the downtown area during our location scout and grabbed a blackmagic pocket cinema camera 4k with a 3 axis gimbal. The visual was mostly filmed with long telephoto lenses to make every shot intimate.