Weekly update on The Sequel

[seekingferret]

Vid Draft Week 2


I clipped over ten additional fandoms this week, but that's not going to be my typical pace, I think. While I've been in denial about making this vid, I took relatively detailed notes on the location of Jews dancing in a bunch of the media I've watched over the past two years, so mostly this has been grabbing the easy stuff that I had well documented and clipping it. It will get slower as it goes on.

The clipping process is not purely a mechanical process of scrubbing through the source, finding the moments where Jews dance, and clipping them. There are artistic choices too, because of aspect ratios. I'm standardizing for this vid on 16:9 aspect ratio, as I did on WMLTMD, because it is the compromise ratio. Films mostly are in 2.35:1, older TV is in 4:3, European stuff is in other aspect ratios because Europe, and 16:9 is in the middle. This means that if I am using film source I need to crop the left and right edges, and if I'm using old TV source, I need to crop the top and bottom. Most of the time, that just involves symmetrically lopping off both sides, but I can't automatically do that because sometimes I end up losing the stuff I'm trying to highlight. So I need to evaluate each clip and decide compositionally what I want to do with it. When I clipped "This Is the End", I produced three clips of the Backstreet Boys dance sequence- one where I centered my crop, one where I cropped entirely from the right, and one where I cropped entirely from the left. That will give me more flexibility when editing on the timeline.

The most delightful moment of the last week was in watching On the Basis of Sex and finding that both Ruth and Martin dance, albeit not together. That was not exactly a movie I expected to see Jews dancing in, but it's great. I'm all on board for lots of Armie Hammer dancing in the vid- he also dances in Call Me By Your Name. On the other hand, Adam Driver's Flip Zimmerman does not dance in Blackkklansman. But that's okay, I think the movie says really interesting things about Jewishness and Blackness and their relationship anyway.

While I'm talking source collection, thanks to beatriceeagle for tipping me to The Campaign for Camelot.

gwyn offered to dig up additional Happy Endings source for me- I feature one clip from the show in WMLTMD, but there is other dancing available that I could have used. I am at the moment of two minds on reusing sources from the original vid. That's because this vid doesn't really have an intelligent concept behind it yet. I said what I wanted to say about Jews Dancing in WMLTMD. This vid is in my head literally just "The Sequel", me working through the excess of feelings about Jews Dancing in Media that I'd kind of hoped would just dissipate over time. Part of me thinks that its conception as Sequel requires it consist solely of the new stuff, the stuff that didn't make it into the original. But I don't know, maybe it's fine to include other dancing from sources I used in Mixed Dancing. I'm still mulling.

Part of the pleasure of WMLTMD is that overwhelming sense of breadth. Wow, look at how many places in media have Jews dancing. Wow, look at the variety. If I repeat, I risk diminishing the breadth. Also, as you'll see in this draft, I have added a moment where as a callback I show a rapid scroll through a sequence from WMLTMD to a drumbeat. It's a very The Sequel moment, and it only works if I'm not reusing fandoms of WMLTMD. But if I do end up adding more stuff from Happy Endings or whatever, I have other ideas of what I could set on that drumbeat instead.


Also I want to caution again that this draft is not really working toward final clip positions, it's me throwing stuff on the timeline as I get it because it makes me happy. This sort of vid is not a very narrative vid, so lots of stuff can sort of fit almost anywhere on the timeline. But as I collect more source, I will want to move things around so that I am balancing flow and matching of movement against as much diversity of visuals and contexts as possible. That will make everything feel more dynamic, and sustain the viewer's interest better through the length of the song. Right now, the beginning has a lot of the dance scene from The Good Fight, simply because it was one of the first things I clipped. I expect I will move some of that out to later in the timeline, and probably use less of it in general, as I get more source collected. That said, some of the clips probably have settled in their final positions, or close to it, just because I like the music to image matches so much. It's very much a process.


fandoms I have clipped

Caddyshack
Bruriah
The Good Fight (Season 2 Episode 7)
Life During Wartime
Destination Wedding (bad rip)
The Good Wife Season 2 Episode 16
The Women's Balcony
Northern Exposure (1.2, other episodes not yet clipped)
Barney's Version
The Sitter
How to Make it in America (episode 1)
Late Marriage
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
While We're Young
Seinfeld
Hello, Goodbye
This is the End
The Campaign for Camelot
On the Basis of Sex
Modern Romance (A Fifth of Beethoven)
The Wonder Years

Fandoms I know have mixed dancing, but haven't yet clipped

Hart of Dixie (multiple episodes, esp. early S3)
Caddyshack 2
The Pickle Recipe
Parks and Recreation (Jean Ralphio in series finale extended, also End of the World Party drumline)
Biloxi Blues
Community (Annie)
Call Me By Your Name
Burn Notice (Season 1 episode 5)
Love Comes Lately
Beverly Hills 90210 (David Silver)
Russian Doll (episode 2)
Schitt's Creek (The Olive Branch)
The Year of Spectacular Men (bathroom scene)
Superstore (S4E17)
One Small Hitch
Starsky and Hutch (original) ('Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back Into Your Hearts')
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
The Crazy Ones (S1E19)

Also, cartoons including Big Mouth, The Simpsons, Gravity Falls, Duck Tales, and Rugrats, if I feel like adding cartoons

Fandoms that might have mixed dancing, but I haven't checked yet

The L Word (Jenny Schecter)
High Maintenance (Derech)
Man Seeking Woman
Beauty and the Baker
Shtisel