The Creation of "Badder Badder Schwing"

"Badder Badder Schwing"

The first moments of the making of the video were characterized by stumbles, but sometimes stumbles turn around and become the brightest moments.

On my 40th birthday, the day I started to shoot "Jook Gal" , I suffered a little heartbreak. I found a beautiful location near USC/County Medical, a brilliantly orange construction scaffolding, with lots of diagonal support beams, and had an excellent dance on it. Only when I got home did I realize that my camera had been in the wrong setting, and the entire take was out of focus, unusable. It's the risk of being my own cameraman; I don't always know what I've got until too late.

So, on my first day with "Badder Badder Schwing", I decided to head straight for that structure, take advantage of it, before it disappeared. Sadly, it was already gone, a victim of over-productivity.

I looked around for something else to shoot, and saw some train cars nearby, sitting idle on the tracks. By chance, they were identical to the black tanker cars that ended up in the video, but I never got to climb on these ones. I had just set up my camera, when a train engine drove up, hooked up to the black tankers, and started pushing them away. Well, I could take losing the tankers, but I could not possibly miss the opportunity that was suddenly presented to me, and so, as they rode off, I rolled camera, and leapt onto the back of the engine car, the last shot in the video. No one even saw me, and I leapt off shortly after we moved into shadow.

Thankfully, the trestles were also there, and served as my first dance partner of the shoot. The sun was setting as I played on them, so I had to move progressively upward to stay out of shadow. I had thought to wear the brown jacket, because I thought it fit the Fat Boy Slim song, but dark clothing disappears in the dark, which is why I'm always wearing colorful shirts, otherwise.

I did get spooked on the trestles, I admit. There's a psychology to getting spooked. I had played all over them, with no rush, no trying, but as I climbed toward the very summit (featured in the next-to-last shot), I began to imagine what I was going to do. And that's a mistake; if I think ahead, instead of focusing on where I'm at, then I lose the reality of the now, and get out of my own awareness. That's the same problem I had had with the tree jump from "Grand Avenue". I first imagined the jump while walking along the hand-rail, and that leads to vertigo, and getting spooked, and that lead me to weeks before I could attempt the jump.

In this case, it wasn't weeks, but literally an entire length of the song went by, without me doing more than inching my way up to the top of the trestles, standing, and slowly allowing myself to get back to the frame of mind in which I can dance. It's a good lesson in not getting ahead of myself.

The Hollywood sign I went to on Thanksgiving, because I wanted to take advantage of the holiday, and do something that normally wouldn't be allowed. I figured that there had to be fewer park rangers in the Hollywood hills that day. I was most interested in actually getting on the letters, themselves, but the difficulty of reaching them without being spotted was pretty daunting, and posted signs warned of a pretty big fine (and I'm pretty broke). In the following passersby video, I had a first conversation in which I was informing someone else that he was trespassing, cuz usually someone's pretty eager to tell me.

The same guy I was talking to actually ended up joining me on camera, dancing in front of the sunset, my first guest appearance. But that's footage for "Ah Ndiya", which I'm still editing.

So much of my shooting has been around the industrial corridor and railroad tracks that line the L.A. River, on the east side of downtown, that I was happy to take advantage of being out of that neighborhood, and drove around Hollywood at night, looking for well-lit places to shoot. I saw a Ralph's supermarket with a rooftop parking lot, and figured it was a good place to play, and it was, but it wasn't until I decided to enlist the shopping cart that I realized my true purpose there.


I had another heartbreak at the truck repair yard, specifically for an opportunity lost for this blog. I snuck in, danced, and then this big guy appeared around the corner, and asked me gruffly what the hell I was doing. I swear to God, I thought: oh, this is gonna be great for the blog! I told him I was shooting a dance video for youtube; he looked at me like I was crazy, and then he walked away. Didn't say I could stay, but he didn't say I had to go. When I was done with the song, I went back to the camera, but alas! It wasn't rolling at all! (My only excuse is that I was very tired from shooting). I considered leaving, having obviously overstayed my welcome, but I couldn't stand the thought of walking away from that beautiful set-up, when I hadn't even been asked to go, so I snuck back in, and did the whole dance again!

As always, I am eager to share my falls and stumbles, because it's well-earned footage. No hard crashes, but some nice near splats!