Michael Jackson's This Is It: Blu-Ray Disc

This film captures something rarely documented: the painstaking work behind world-class performance. For music teachers and directors, watching Jackson develop choreography, refine arrangements, and problem-solve with his ensemble provides concrete models for how rehearsal builds excellence. The bonus features on costuming, audition processes, and production design make this valuable across music, dance, and theater curricula.

Intimate and instructional. You watch Jackson test ideas, adjust tempos, collaborate with arrangers and choreographers, and refine every detail. The behind-the-scenes footage reveals both the spontaneity of creative problem-solving and the discipline required to realize a vision at scale.

Music teachers, band and choir directors, dance educators, and students preparing for professional performance or studying composition and arrangement. This film serves music education by documenting how a master artist develops a major concert production from concept through rehearsal.

• Screen key rehearsal sequences in sections to isolate specific staging or arrangement decisions; pause to discuss what Jackson is testing or refining.
• Use the costume and production design featurettes to illustrate how visual concept supports musical intent; connect this to your own concert programming.
• Focus on the audition footage to help students understand how professional ensembles are built and what directors listen for beyond technical skill.
• Pair scenes of Jackson working with his dancers to emphasize how rhythm, musicality, and movement must integrate; this applies across instrumental, vocal, and movement-based classes.

Screen selected scenes during rehearsals when your ensemble is developing new work; use specific moments to illustrate arrangement choices, staging concepts, or ensemble collaboration. The documentaries work well in music history or production classes as case studies in concert development. Teacher professional development meetings can benefit from discussing Jackson's rehearsal philosophy and its application to your own program.

• Analyzing how arrangement, choreography, and staging reinforce musical intent
• Understanding professional audition and ensemble-building processes
• Recognizing the role of costume, lighting, and visual design in concert production
• Observing how rehearsal refinement moves from conception to polished performance