Ginger and Fred vid babble, as requested
This got long. Like, really, really long. Four pages of long. If you make it to the end, you should be awarded a medal.
Elaboration on the narrative behind A Love That Won't Sit Still
Fair warning: I know just enough musical terminology to be dangerous, and the only dance terminology I'm halfway sure of is for ballroom--I only did ballet/tap/jazz sporadically until stopping altogether at fourteen.
Narrative Stuff
The theme for this one, apparently, was "spinning," because as I look back over the vid I realize how very much I used shots of spins and twirls and turns and other rotations. I'm pretty sure it has to do with Vienna Teng's delivery of the lyrics; I dunno, whenever I listen to the song, I have a mental image of something spinning. Maybe it's the vibrato she uses on some words, and possibly also the strings playing almost frantic ascending notes in places (especially the bridge).
This was really Linda's, Mimi's, Dale's, and to a lesser extent Penny's vid at heart. They're the ones who require the most convincing-through-dancing, although Lizzie, Sherry, and Amanda certainly do get complications introduced to their lives from Huck, Bake, and Tony respectively. Irene, Dinah, and Honey don't really fit that particular plot structure, so you'll notice fewer clips from their films (none at all from Flying Down to Rio, in fact). For that reason, I tried to use a lot from "They All Laughed," "Cheek to Cheek"--though that one is slow enough that it didn't always work--and "Night and Day" (particularly as I'd shortchanged it a bit in "Happiness" and wanted to use more of it this time around). "Isn't It a Lovely Day" as well, but less so, since I'd used it a lot in the other two vids. These are the dances that seem to me to particularly capture that spirit of "look, really, you want to like me even though right now you think I'm annoying!" from Fred, so they seemed to fit the best thematically.
Like Astaire's choreography does, I tried to play around with vidding alternately to the lyrics, the beat, the piano, and the strings. This totally explains why, say, the clip from "The Yam" that starts at 3:22 has Ginger bouncing into one chair on "don't" and the next chair on the drumbeat right after "won't." ;) Working with different pieces of the song helped ensure the cuts wouldn't get too regular, which could become excruciating to watch in a longish vid like this one. Plus, it was more fun!
Still, the lyrics are a very important part of this one; they tell a story that I think fits the Astaire and Rogers characters to a T. The most obvious way I responded to them was to take the opposition presented--the speaker is set in her ways, yet there's chaos introduced by the "love that won't sit still" that will take "everything that [she is]" to accept and let in to her life--and rework it into not-dancing vs. dancing. On the simplest level, it's a question of tempo and intensity--obviously, the chorus (can it be a chorus when the words are different? I told you I don't know much music terminology) is faster and more driving, so it would need clips that match that, thus dancing vs. not-dancing. But nicely enough, that contrast works for the story I wanted to tell too. I think the only "not dancing" lines where I have them dancing are ones where it's not going very well, such as the two from "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" or the "please not now" at 0:26, where Peter kind of tosses Linda into what is supposed to be a ballet-style "tweeeest" and she doesn’t like it very much. (I might've cut that better, actually; it could use more of her looking dubious at the end than it has now.)
One thing I really like about the song is how metaphorical it is; the speaker's love is like "inconvenient fireworks" and being caught in the sun with her umbrella, which are wonderful images. It was great fun to be able to excavate the meaning behind them and then make another, visual metaphor on the same thing, such as, for example, when Teng sings, "and me with my umbrella," at 1:56. I boiled it down to "unprepared," and ended up going with Penny washing her hair while Lucky's out in her living room. (Well, okay, considering there isn't a scene in any film where Ginger's holding an umbrella, that would've had to be done anyway, but I'm trying to explain a process here. ;))
Aside from the prevailing dancing/not-dancing opposition, things really started getting placed where they did with serious symbolic intent around 2:58, and this lasts through the end of the song. 2:58 is where the last set of "please not now"s starts, and that section uses four clips. The first one continues from the pause in "Never Gonna Dance" (tangent: I was SO PLEASED when it worked out that I didn't have to cut there. More on that later) and has both of them whirling offstage, or nearly offstage. Penny is very much not looking at Lucky. He doesn't catch her as she goes. The next one, from "Night and Day," also has Mimi spinning away, and she is again deliberately avoiding Guy's gaze. However, Guy grabs hold of her arm at the end. The third, from the Barkleys rendition of "They Can't Take That Away from Me," has them walking off stage almost sedately, arm in arm, and Dinah looks at Josh very briefly before looking away. Finally there's a clip from the Shall We Dance version of "Can't Take That Away," where they aren't moving their bodies at all, and Linda actually looks up at Peter for a long moment (originally shorter, but extended by me through the magic of slow-mo *g*) before looking away again. Obviously, her resistance is waning, as is the speaker's, because Teng's vocals are decrescendoing with each line.
Then we slowly build up movement as Teng gradually crescendos from a whisper to almost a belt on the set of "what do I do"s that follows. They're covering more of the floor and going faster as the song progresses.
The first of the five clips in the last twenty-two seconds is from "Face the Music," and has them dancing while mirroring each other (and spinning again!), but not touching. The second one (from "Night and Day") has them connected only by the hand as he leads her into that beautiful backbend and then an underarm turn. The third one ("Castle Walk") shows them in a closed hold very similar to the one for Smooth and Standard dances--more points of connection, basically. Then there's the lift ("Missouri Waltz"), where she demonstrates such exquisite trust in him, and where they go one better on the body connection of the closed hold when she lays her head on his shoulder.
...And then I kind of broke it all to hell with the kiss from Castles at the end, but that was primarily to serve the music. I needed something that had action I could time to "am," but nothing that would look odd if I cut it right after, when there's a brief rest before the electronic-sounding tag comes in. (Mostly because I couldn't figure out how to vid that; I tried some things, like using the bit where Huck and Lizzie jump up the stairs at the end of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and then having their walking offstage take place over that instrumental bit, but nothing looked good.) But we'll pretend I had a narrative reason like "and here we see the binary opposition between dancing and not dancing break down to indicate she's accepted his chaos," or something. ;)
And of course the title I pulled from the lyrics, and really, that just encapsulates the whole thing for me--a love whose chaos drives the plot of the films, a love that's expressed through dance, a love that won't sit still.
Technical Stuff, aka a Beginner's View of Vidding, Plus Extended Rambling About Some of the Dances and Snarky Commentary on Some Costumes
The really wonderful thing about vidding these movies is that Astaire's insistence on dances being filmed with as few cuts as possible leads to really, really extended clips without cuts. SO GREAT. I very rarely had to work around a cut the director or editor had made, which made work on all three of these vids go about ten times faster than the one I made for due South a couple years ago. Plus, there is of course so much movement, glorious movement, that I don't have to cut to create the illusion of it. (Also, easy to avoid shots of talking faces!) I can have things like the ten second-long clip from "Never Gonna Dance" at 2:54, and they don't slow things down. Oh, and Astaire's broken rhythm choreography basically means there's always something happening on every possible beat, no matter where you put the clip (well, within reason; often it needs to be adjusted by a fraction of a second). It is FABULOUS. Honestly, whatever works in these vids should be credited to him, Ginger, and Hermes Pan.
Of course, you can't get too wild and crazy and still have things match well. As with the other two I've vidded for these movies, this song is in 4/4, and the tempo is fairly consistent with them. Simple reason: so were the dances, with the exceptions of the waltz medley from Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and the "Waltz in Swing Time." (Which...okay. Is it just me? 'Cause I freaking hate that dance. I recognize the technical skill involved, and Croce and Mueller's gushing about it is well-earned, but it leaves me cold every time I see it. I don't know if it's the fact that it's couched as a performance/audition--I don't think so, because my favorite, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," is also a performance--if it's the choreography, if it's that I don't like my waltzes getting all syncopated, or if it's just Ginger's dress. [Seriously. The amount of hate I have for that dress and all its ruffles is immense. She looks like a sheep in need of shearing. Also, OMG, PETER PAN COLLAR on a BACKLESS EVENING GOWN. With decorative buttons down the front. That dress is a TRAVESTY.] But every time I watch it, I think, "Hmmm. That was nice. Moving on." It doesn't even feel like Penny and Lucky dancing; I feel like any of their characters who are both earning a living by dancing could've plausibly done it in exactly the same way. It's just...there.)
Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes, tempos and time signatures. Okay, so, for me, the pleasure of watching or making a vid is at least 70% in the satisfaction of having the visual match the audio exactly. That's why I chose songs where it would be possible to make things sync up really closely. Narrative is nice, but for me, it's really all about being able to do things like have Bake's fingers extend on the "this" of "so what do I do with this," then cut from "Face the Music" to "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" right on the drum beat at 0:53, or to cut between the various spins starting at 2:51. Honestly, I think I might vid more with blocks of motion than specific actions or scenes.
My secondary concern is having transitions feel organic. I tried to do things like end a clip with Ginger on the right and Fred on the left of the screen, then begin the next clip with them in those same positions relative to each other, going into a step or move that might, with some imagination, come naturally after the one in the last clip, to help ease the transitions. Where it was feasible, I also tried to make sure that if their weight was on their right feet when I cut it was still there in the next clip, or both clips showed them mid-way through a jump or weight-change or whatever.
You know, another nice thing about vidding dances is that when all else failed ("And just what the hell can I do with 'Cross-indexing every weatherman's report'?"), I could get up and dance it. Really. A couple times, I unplugged my headphones and danced around my apartment or bedroom to the music, seeing what kinds of moves seemed to go well with a piece of the melody or accompaniment. This was mostly to figure out something basic like whether a step that traveled or a step that stayed in one place would be better, but it was helpful. I wonder if it'll work if/when I do a vid in another fandom.
Some random unorganized thoughts about the vid and the movies
- "Hard to Handle" is like the easiest dance ever to integrate into other music. I think it's half because it has a lot of starts and stops and tempo changes, and half because they are so obviously happy while they do this dance, both as Huck and Lizzie and Fred and Ginger. (I think I waxed rhapsodic about that very quality a few posts back when I was talking about Roberta.) It works very well for any spot that suggests joy.
- The dog-walking scene at 1:40 was actually the first thing that got put into the spreadsheet/storyboard for this vid. I think I originally had it at "what a fool you have made me," but ended up switching it to where it is because I liked the idea of the "crowd" that gets "rev[ved] up" being one of dogs. *snerk*
- Don't those extended "still"s at 2:32 and 3:44 just cry out for gliding skating moves? I thought they did. However, the bit where they skate toward the camera gets to be kind of cheesy the longer you let it linger (it works for the dance, but not in a vid; plus it destroys momentum), so I was rather pleased when the accompaniment there let me stick in that beautiful double turn from "Night and Day."
- The part at 2:31 where they swing their arms overhead got stuck freakin' everywhere before I finally found a place for it. It's one of my favorite moments from "They All Laughed," and by god, I was going to use it. ;) In fact, the more I watched it for these vids, the more I fell in love with that dance. Ginger in particular looks utterly joyful in it, and it's practically the first time in the movie Linda looks happy with anything. Seriously, go watch her. She sparkles. Another thing I like about that dance is the effort, token though it is, to incorporate ballet into a tap/jazz/ballroom number. Granted, that effort basically extends as far as having Fred lead Ginger into a series of finger turns rather than the more common underarm turns, but I still like it. (If you're not sure which is which, notice in this one that she's turning her hand around his middle finger rather than his whole palm as she spins in that loooong sequence that takes them around the floor nearly twice.)
- This is the only time in my short acquaintance with it that I've wished Barkleys had been done in black and white. (Wait. Actually, no; Ginger's neon pink dress at the end would've gone over much better in black and white.) I fiddled around with it as much as iMovie would let me, but it's still obvious that it's a color movie that's been converted to b&w, at least to me. Sigh.
- I wanted so badly to use more from "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in this one, because it's my favorite, but alas, it was not to be. It's so much slower than the others; most of the steps would need a significantly slower song or section of a song to look right.
Whew! Yeah, I talk way too much.
Elaboration on the narrative behind A Love That Won't Sit Still
Fair warning: I know just enough musical terminology to be dangerous, and the only dance terminology I'm halfway sure of is for ballroom--I only did ballet/tap/jazz sporadically until stopping altogether at fourteen.
Narrative Stuff
The theme for this one, apparently, was "spinning," because as I look back over the vid I realize how very much I used shots of spins and twirls and turns and other rotations. I'm pretty sure it has to do with Vienna Teng's delivery of the lyrics; I dunno, whenever I listen to the song, I have a mental image of something spinning. Maybe it's the vibrato she uses on some words, and possibly also the strings playing almost frantic ascending notes in places (especially the bridge).
This was really Linda's, Mimi's, Dale's, and to a lesser extent Penny's vid at heart. They're the ones who require the most convincing-through-dancing, although Lizzie, Sherry, and Amanda certainly do get complications introduced to their lives from Huck, Bake, and Tony respectively. Irene, Dinah, and Honey don't really fit that particular plot structure, so you'll notice fewer clips from their films (none at all from Flying Down to Rio, in fact). For that reason, I tried to use a lot from "They All Laughed," "Cheek to Cheek"--though that one is slow enough that it didn't always work--and "Night and Day" (particularly as I'd shortchanged it a bit in "Happiness" and wanted to use more of it this time around). "Isn't It a Lovely Day" as well, but less so, since I'd used it a lot in the other two vids. These are the dances that seem to me to particularly capture that spirit of "look, really, you want to like me even though right now you think I'm annoying!" from Fred, so they seemed to fit the best thematically.
Like Astaire's choreography does, I tried to play around with vidding alternately to the lyrics, the beat, the piano, and the strings. This totally explains why, say, the clip from "The Yam" that starts at 3:22 has Ginger bouncing into one chair on "don't" and the next chair on the drumbeat right after "won't." ;) Working with different pieces of the song helped ensure the cuts wouldn't get too regular, which could become excruciating to watch in a longish vid like this one. Plus, it was more fun!
Still, the lyrics are a very important part of this one; they tell a story that I think fits the Astaire and Rogers characters to a T. The most obvious way I responded to them was to take the opposition presented--the speaker is set in her ways, yet there's chaos introduced by the "love that won't sit still" that will take "everything that [she is]" to accept and let in to her life--and rework it into not-dancing vs. dancing. On the simplest level, it's a question of tempo and intensity--obviously, the chorus (can it be a chorus when the words are different? I told you I don't know much music terminology) is faster and more driving, so it would need clips that match that, thus dancing vs. not-dancing. But nicely enough, that contrast works for the story I wanted to tell too. I think the only "not dancing" lines where I have them dancing are ones where it's not going very well, such as the two from "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" or the "please not now" at 0:26, where Peter kind of tosses Linda into what is supposed to be a ballet-style "tweeeest" and she doesn’t like it very much. (I might've cut that better, actually; it could use more of her looking dubious at the end than it has now.)
One thing I really like about the song is how metaphorical it is; the speaker's love is like "inconvenient fireworks" and being caught in the sun with her umbrella, which are wonderful images. It was great fun to be able to excavate the meaning behind them and then make another, visual metaphor on the same thing, such as, for example, when Teng sings, "and me with my umbrella," at 1:56. I boiled it down to "unprepared," and ended up going with Penny washing her hair while Lucky's out in her living room. (Well, okay, considering there isn't a scene in any film where Ginger's holding an umbrella, that would've had to be done anyway, but I'm trying to explain a process here. ;))
Aside from the prevailing dancing/not-dancing opposition, things really started getting placed where they did with serious symbolic intent around 2:58, and this lasts through the end of the song. 2:58 is where the last set of "please not now"s starts, and that section uses four clips. The first one continues from the pause in "Never Gonna Dance" (tangent: I was SO PLEASED when it worked out that I didn't have to cut there. More on that later) and has both of them whirling offstage, or nearly offstage. Penny is very much not looking at Lucky. He doesn't catch her as she goes. The next one, from "Night and Day," also has Mimi spinning away, and she is again deliberately avoiding Guy's gaze. However, Guy grabs hold of her arm at the end. The third, from the Barkleys rendition of "They Can't Take That Away from Me," has them walking off stage almost sedately, arm in arm, and Dinah looks at Josh very briefly before looking away. Finally there's a clip from the Shall We Dance version of "Can't Take That Away," where they aren't moving their bodies at all, and Linda actually looks up at Peter for a long moment (originally shorter, but extended by me through the magic of slow-mo *g*) before looking away again. Obviously, her resistance is waning, as is the speaker's, because Teng's vocals are decrescendoing with each line.
Then we slowly build up movement as Teng gradually crescendos from a whisper to almost a belt on the set of "what do I do"s that follows. They're covering more of the floor and going faster as the song progresses.
The first of the five clips in the last twenty-two seconds is from "Face the Music," and has them dancing while mirroring each other (and spinning again!), but not touching. The second one (from "Night and Day") has them connected only by the hand as he leads her into that beautiful backbend and then an underarm turn. The third one ("Castle Walk") shows them in a closed hold very similar to the one for Smooth and Standard dances--more points of connection, basically. Then there's the lift ("Missouri Waltz"), where she demonstrates such exquisite trust in him, and where they go one better on the body connection of the closed hold when she lays her head on his shoulder.
...And then I kind of broke it all to hell with the kiss from Castles at the end, but that was primarily to serve the music. I needed something that had action I could time to "am," but nothing that would look odd if I cut it right after, when there's a brief rest before the electronic-sounding tag comes in. (Mostly because I couldn't figure out how to vid that; I tried some things, like using the bit where Huck and Lizzie jump up the stairs at the end of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and then having their walking offstage take place over that instrumental bit, but nothing looked good.) But we'll pretend I had a narrative reason like "and here we see the binary opposition between dancing and not dancing break down to indicate she's accepted his chaos," or something. ;)
And of course the title I pulled from the lyrics, and really, that just encapsulates the whole thing for me--a love whose chaos drives the plot of the films, a love that's expressed through dance, a love that won't sit still.
Technical Stuff, aka a Beginner's View of Vidding, Plus Extended Rambling About Some of the Dances and Snarky Commentary on Some Costumes
The really wonderful thing about vidding these movies is that Astaire's insistence on dances being filmed with as few cuts as possible leads to really, really extended clips without cuts. SO GREAT. I very rarely had to work around a cut the director or editor had made, which made work on all three of these vids go about ten times faster than the one I made for due South a couple years ago. Plus, there is of course so much movement, glorious movement, that I don't have to cut to create the illusion of it. (Also, easy to avoid shots of talking faces!) I can have things like the ten second-long clip from "Never Gonna Dance" at 2:54, and they don't slow things down. Oh, and Astaire's broken rhythm choreography basically means there's always something happening on every possible beat, no matter where you put the clip (well, within reason; often it needs to be adjusted by a fraction of a second). It is FABULOUS. Honestly, whatever works in these vids should be credited to him, Ginger, and Hermes Pan.
Of course, you can't get too wild and crazy and still have things match well. As with the other two I've vidded for these movies, this song is in 4/4, and the tempo is fairly consistent with them. Simple reason: so were the dances, with the exceptions of the waltz medley from Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and the "Waltz in Swing Time." (Which...okay. Is it just me? 'Cause I freaking hate that dance. I recognize the technical skill involved, and Croce and Mueller's gushing about it is well-earned, but it leaves me cold every time I see it. I don't know if it's the fact that it's couched as a performance/audition--I don't think so, because my favorite, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," is also a performance--if it's the choreography, if it's that I don't like my waltzes getting all syncopated, or if it's just Ginger's dress. [Seriously. The amount of hate I have for that dress and all its ruffles is immense. She looks like a sheep in need of shearing. Also, OMG, PETER PAN COLLAR on a BACKLESS EVENING GOWN. With decorative buttons down the front. That dress is a TRAVESTY.] But every time I watch it, I think, "Hmmm. That was nice. Moving on." It doesn't even feel like Penny and Lucky dancing; I feel like any of their characters who are both earning a living by dancing could've plausibly done it in exactly the same way. It's just...there.)
Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes, tempos and time signatures. Okay, so, for me, the pleasure of watching or making a vid is at least 70% in the satisfaction of having the visual match the audio exactly. That's why I chose songs where it would be possible to make things sync up really closely. Narrative is nice, but for me, it's really all about being able to do things like have Bake's fingers extend on the "this" of "so what do I do with this," then cut from "Face the Music" to "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" right on the drum beat at 0:53, or to cut between the various spins starting at 2:51. Honestly, I think I might vid more with blocks of motion than specific actions or scenes.
My secondary concern is having transitions feel organic. I tried to do things like end a clip with Ginger on the right and Fred on the left of the screen, then begin the next clip with them in those same positions relative to each other, going into a step or move that might, with some imagination, come naturally after the one in the last clip, to help ease the transitions. Where it was feasible, I also tried to make sure that if their weight was on their right feet when I cut it was still there in the next clip, or both clips showed them mid-way through a jump or weight-change or whatever.
You know, another nice thing about vidding dances is that when all else failed ("And just what the hell can I do with 'Cross-indexing every weatherman's report'?"), I could get up and dance it. Really. A couple times, I unplugged my headphones and danced around my apartment or bedroom to the music, seeing what kinds of moves seemed to go well with a piece of the melody or accompaniment. This was mostly to figure out something basic like whether a step that traveled or a step that stayed in one place would be better, but it was helpful. I wonder if it'll work if/when I do a vid in another fandom.
Some random unorganized thoughts about the vid and the movies
- "Hard to Handle" is like the easiest dance ever to integrate into other music. I think it's half because it has a lot of starts and stops and tempo changes, and half because they are so obviously happy while they do this dance, both as Huck and Lizzie and Fred and Ginger. (I think I waxed rhapsodic about that very quality a few posts back when I was talking about Roberta.) It works very well for any spot that suggests joy.
- The dog-walking scene at 1:40 was actually the first thing that got put into the spreadsheet/storyboard for this vid. I think I originally had it at "what a fool you have made me," but ended up switching it to where it is because I liked the idea of the "crowd" that gets "rev[ved] up" being one of dogs. *snerk*
- Don't those extended "still"s at 2:32 and 3:44 just cry out for gliding skating moves? I thought they did. However, the bit where they skate toward the camera gets to be kind of cheesy the longer you let it linger (it works for the dance, but not in a vid; plus it destroys momentum), so I was rather pleased when the accompaniment there let me stick in that beautiful double turn from "Night and Day."
- The part at 2:31 where they swing their arms overhead got stuck freakin' everywhere before I finally found a place for it. It's one of my favorite moments from "They All Laughed," and by god, I was going to use it. ;) In fact, the more I watched it for these vids, the more I fell in love with that dance. Ginger in particular looks utterly joyful in it, and it's practically the first time in the movie Linda looks happy with anything. Seriously, go watch her. She sparkles. Another thing I like about that dance is the effort, token though it is, to incorporate ballet into a tap/jazz/ballroom number. Granted, that effort basically extends as far as having Fred lead Ginger into a series of finger turns rather than the more common underarm turns, but I still like it. (If you're not sure which is which, notice in this one that she's turning her hand around his middle finger rather than his whole palm as she spins in that loooong sequence that takes them around the floor nearly twice.)
- This is the only time in my short acquaintance with it that I've wished Barkleys had been done in black and white. (Wait. Actually, no; Ginger's neon pink dress at the end would've gone over much better in black and white.) I fiddled around with it as much as iMovie would let me, but it's still obvious that it's a color movie that's been converted to b&w, at least to me. Sigh.
- I wanted so badly to use more from "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in this one, because it's my favorite, but alas, it was not to be. It's so much slower than the others; most of the steps would need a significantly slower song or section of a song to look right.
Whew! Yeah, I talk way too much.