Since my last blog post about the issues I’ve had with the TicTocPop Popping channel there has been some communication with us about the issues raised both in this blog and in the community. Otis and I had some civil and productive messaging about the clips. Since then, he has posted a new version of the clip and given both Studio G in the DMV and Electrosoul a shoutout. He has also included a link to our jam footage. It seems that he has also been doing that to all the other clips he’s been posting. Those are good things!
It is important that I give credit where credit is due. Regarding the tone of his clips, Otis has explained he did not intend for things to become mean spirited. If you watch this new clip I think you’ll probably agree.
I think in terms of the popping community, it is important to stay positive. We have entirely too much shit talking these days in my opinion. Some of my friends thrive on this sort of drama but I’m definitively not in that camp. I shared these sentiments with Otis and he seems to be on the same page. I believe in the heat of the moment we sometimes say things we don’t really mean to be permanently archived and played over and over again.
For my part, I removed the initial copyright claim on the YouTube clip(s) that I filed 2 weeks ago. I decided to do so before we had actually chat. I think I need to be very clear here that while this particular set of clips from Electrosoul 7’s battles may have been the catalyst for this process…it was the larger issue of copyright that got my attention. It could have been any clip that triggered my response. I don’t monetize dance clips. I do monetize others. Who knows I might have to fight for one of those some day.
The bottom line is regarding the Electrosoul 7 video clips I was prepared to just let this go anyway. If I had to fight for them it would have taken more effort in the long run than it was worth. In the end I also wasn’t entirely sure that tictocpop or anyone else didn’t have the right to use the footage the way it was used. The courtesy i have asked for has now been given. My issue with tictoppop has reached its conclusion.
On that note, i believe there are other important things to think about. I’ve learned that many people out there on YouTube, Facebook, and social media in general have what they think is a good grasp of what is “right” or “wrong” with respect to digital content. They have preconceived notions about what is protected and what isn’t. Most of them are very confident in their positions. Well… I’ve learned that most people know nothing. I include myself in this. I’ve learned a lot from this process.
There is a difference between what YouTube allows and or facilitates with content claims, and what is defined in the law. There is a difference between what people do routinely with digital content, vs what they have a right to do. There is a difference between knowing your rights vs defending your rights. Many of my friends even think of themselves as knowledgeable on this. Well, with the exception of a couple attorneys I know..they are not. For the most part, as content creators and consumers, we are all out in the wild.
If you create something and you feel it is infringed upon then you must defend yourself vigorously if you want anything done about it. youTube will not do that for you. They get 3 million content id claims a year (at least) and it is for the most part automated. Any dispute that is truly worth fighting for between the two parties will in the end be decided in a courtroom or between a lawyers. None of what happened here rose to that level for me. I just don’t have the time to defend a clip and/or photograph that makes no money.
This is a fascinating subject. The more I read on it, the more I respect both sides of the argument when it comes to what is called “transformative” use of copyrighted material. That is the key issue that has consumed my brain for a couple of weeks. Some people believe that parody/commentary by their very nature are transformative. Take Honest Trailer’s for example. That is one of my favorite youtube channels. It is absolutely using copyrighted material. Now, ask yourself, are those clips up because ScreenRant has a 1) right to do it and it is legally permissible or 2) did they have permission to do so? Why don’t we see entire movies uploaded with commentary? How does the famous “Phantom Edit” of the prequels for star wars exist? It is transformative I guess…but how much so? Does it completely replace the original?
The answer? It’s complicated.
I would just leave you with one thought. Don’t let the fact that you copy and repost photographs and/or video clips on a frequent basis erode the knowledge that content creators have rights. Just because you haven’t been confronted yet doesn’t mean there aren’t worthwhile principles you should be considering.
I’ll keep this brief. The first post can be read here.
As if by clockwork, Otis Funkmeyer posted another video today which was a combination yet another one of his “commentaries” of a call out battle against him from Devious. I won’t link to his page from mine just on principal.
The punchline? He added another #Electrosoul 7 clip. One he missed earlier. It was the same. No credits and no permission. All of this was done with full knowledge of our position. Actions speak loudly for this man don’t they?
This was the original footage of the call out battle uploaded by Devious on the Gr818ers facebook page. It’s a fun clip and not full of drama at all. Watch and decide for yourselves. You don’t need anyone to give you a play by play. You have eyes and ears.
It’s getting kind of boring now so back to more interesting subjects!
The clip above and three others is what this post is all about. This will probably be a rare occurrence in my blog. I’m taking an opportunity to complain about something that I feel was a transgression on my rights, and my #Electrosoul Team’s rights as a content creator(s). Forgive me if this is a little long, but Otis and I as it turns out have mutual friends. Some of them needed a good explanation of why I’m angry about this subject.
This is essentially about actions taken by Otis Funkmeyer, the man behind TICTOCPOP on YouTube. This is not a huge deal. No one died. What it is at the least for me is extremely irritating. At the worst, I believe it is copyright infringement. In the middle? I think he did something wrong. I’ll get back to this. First let me give you a context.
We held the 7th iteration of our local jam Electrosoul on July 30, 2016. It was overall, a good experience. As always we have things to learn and intend to get better each year. For those who are unfamiliar with our jam, it is a dance competition we hold every year which thanks to a lot of teamwork and goodwill has been growing. We get more and more participation every year from both locals and guests from out of town. Our visitors and participants have come from all over the world. We are still what I’d consider to be a medium size event in the grand scheme of things.
Throwing a jam is a lot of work. It takes a long time to plan. We have to line up potential judges, djs, battle guest(s), venue(s) all of which take time and money. There is the fee for each vendor, the prize money, the travel costs, food…yada yada yada. You can fill in the blanks. We get ready all year by having fundraising events and also spend money out of our pockets. We line up a team of about 12 volunteers as well. Then of course we have all the networking and marketing we need to do to get people to the jam. At best, we hope to break even somehow. That doesn’t happen much. Not yet. It is completely ok with us we know it takes time to get a local scene large enough to fund the type of jam we like. We throw this jam because we love doing it.
At the end of the day, the only evidence of our jam every year is our youtube presence. It is a critical part of our outreach. I think it is the same for every promoter. We have great tools, but there only a few. Nowadays it is Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.We take the time to capture the jam on video. I personally own all of the equipment so it is yet another expense to throw on the pile. We then make sure to categorize the clips and upload them with a jam trailer in the beginning. This jam trailer is critical because it identifies who we are and it also gives a shout out to our key sponsors. That is a big deal. We could not function without them. We do a similar thing in the jam description. We repeat the jam and sponsor info and we add references to our judges, battle guests, djs, and anything else that is relevant. They deserve a credit. Here is what it looks like. Notice the view count at the time of this blog. This is our original upload from #Electrosoul.
What tictocpop did, was take 4 clips from our battle and copy them without our permission. The clips were shown almost in their entirety and joined into one clip about 30 minutes long for use in Otis Funkmeyer’s commentary. They were critical clips in our collection since they were of the battles lead up to the final. From a promoter’s perspective they are the highlight of our years worth of work and preparation. I don’t like his commentary because I find him to be rude at times. This is not why I take issue with tictocpop. Frankly, other people are making that case far better than I could and it will resolve itself.
No, for me it is different. I take issue with him not approaching me for permission to use our jam footage. I had just finished putting trailers on almost 50 clips and uploaded them all. Not even 48 hours later, he had done the following with the 4 clips he hijacked.
TICTOCPOP Removed our intro trailer. This is significant because using a trailer days who we and our sponsors are. It is a common practice used by most jams( that have the time to do so) today.
Next he made his commentary and embedded our video(s) in his frame. The frame which includes advertising of his own brand.
He added a closing trailer for his own business. The word production seems a bit of a stretch to me.
He added ANOTHER closing trailer for his own business.
He had his own YouTube description for the video which had none of our information or credits.
Other than the obvious issue of him removing all the original shout outs and replacing them with his social media platforms and his book and his businesses..notice something else. The view count. The new compiled video has 1099 and the original final battle has 1026. Look, I’m not one who obsesses over hit counts. In the end, I think our video will showcase the jam, the competitors, the djs, the venue, and the guests just fine. I’m irritated by the principle of the thing. His channel is siphoning off activity from ours without giving credit back to any of the participants.
TICTOPPOP is not a part of our team and should not be using the results of our hard work at #Electrosoul to promote his brand without our permission. There are arrangements that can be made for this sort of cross promotion. GR818ers already reposted our clips with our blessing! They made sure to refer back to the original source and shout out the jam. Everyone is happy. Unfortunately, for this case, we just don’t like TICTOCPOP’s channel. That is not personal. We just don’t. We should have the right to decline to have our footage that we capture of an event that we organized and financed to not be used in such a way. This is not unheard of at all. There is a reason people can’t just hijack JusteDebut footage and use it anywhere they please. I’m not saying we are that large. We shouldn’t have to be.
To make matters worse, I am fairly sure Otis Funkmeyer knows I don’t want our footage used by now. Nothing has changed. The video is still up. I don’t know if that will be the case forever. I’m just making my case for those who are interested.
Who do I think will be interested? Other promoters. Just look at this thumbnail list of uploaded videos on tictocpop. Maybe it is an assumption on my part but I don’t think he got permission to use any of these clips. Not all of them are from jams so I have no idea what total metrics are here for clips from other promoters. It does look like a substantial number. You know what? Whether there is infringement or not, it is nice to be asked.
So I’ve taken a lot of shots this last year. As most of my friends now know, the camera almost never leaves my side. One thing I’ve noticed though, is that I have many times where I just can’t get close enough to my subjects. The window of opportunity for some shots is brief to say the least. There is no time to run up to the subjects with my Tamron 28-75mm. There are so many options… but I’m pretty much looking at four candidates.
2 of them are in the $700 range. The Tamron 70-200mm and the Sigma 70-200mm. The Tamron optics have been reported to be better, while the Sigma has a quieter and better autofocus from what I’ve read. Neither of them have image stabilization.
Coming in at about $1400, I’m also considering this Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 USM, with no image stabilization.
I’m not sure yet whether I have the discipline to own lens that is over $2000 bucks. I think I could deal with the $1400. Most of the reviews on the Mark II have been stellar though. Decisions decisions.
I just went to this the other night. It basically has a bunch of short films, about 10 minutes each, submitted by several local teams of amateur filmmakers. The quality varies..but I was impressed overall. I went to this festival about 3 years ago, and the difference in the overall experience was amazing. I think part of it was the experience level of some of the teams had increased of course, but also the technology today is cheaper.
Basically the teams have 48 hours to put a film together. The teams are given a theme, but not a story. They must then write, direct, shoot, produce, and edit the work within 48 hours. All the work must be done without violating copyright. Permission must be obtained for locations being used.
Since my friends and I have been working with video a lot lately, I was particularly attentive to how the teams setup shots. Maybe my friends and I should participate next year!
I’ve recently decided to increase the scope of this blog to include some of my other interests. My hobbies are occupying far more mental energy these days. I’ve blended my interests in dance, videography, and photography in 2010 and the beginning of 2011. I realized that I needed a place to explore and discuss these subjects. This blog seems to be the ideal space for me to go further with the expanding interests in the arts. I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by artists of many mediums. The last 6 years has been been a pretty interesting time period for me. I’ve been reacquainted with the creative communities that I always wanted to spend more time with as a young man. I think most of my friends that are intensively searching themselves and their crafts are the same in this respect. As a result, between my own interests and all the great things I have around me, I have more to blog about than I had previously thought.
Let’s face it, most of us aren’t professionals at this sort of thing. Dancers can’t typically afford to pay for their own professional photographers and videographers. Usually, we depend on someone who is a dancer and a videographer at the same time to blend their interests. We play, tinker, play, tinker, then play some more. I am just one among a growing cadre of dancers who I know is trying to tackle this at a prosumer level. Not all of us can affort the higher end professional video.
Unlike some of my other urban dancer friends, I also try to capture ballet, modern, bellydance as well. Every one of them has a different challenge. Sometimes, you are just trying to capture an overall stage view, where you are centered the entire time. Those are not too bad as long as you have a good seat and tripod. The tougher stuff is when you are in a fluidly moving dance area..where the performers are all around you.
The biggest thing at this point in my learning curve, and some of my friends as well, is stabilization. The whole jittery, bourne ultimatum style blows for filming dancers. You completely loose the effect of how much control and grace the dancers have developed when the frame suddenly moves around. At its worst, viewers of jittery clips will actually complain about getting motion sickness. Some dancers move a great deal. You need to be able to smoothly track them if possible. Holding any of the video cameras by hand, from flip cams & handheld camcorders to DSLRs with HD video, will result in a shaky capture. It is unavoidable. If you want to change that, you need to have some sort of counterweight system. Look online and you’ll find everything from do it yourself (DIY) cheap solutions to complete body rigs which will cost you thousands of dollars. You just need to pick something that fits your budget. I have many friends that fall on different places of the spectrum where this is concerned. I think the one common thing I’ve seen is that we all like to play around with these toys, and are willing to risk some of our play money on the ventures.
This site is great for giving you a good review about many different toys used to improve the video process.
I also love this site because although it is expensive, it really shows you what type of modifications are possible for your DSLR to make your videos more professional and the actually act of shooting them much more comfortable.
Lenses are a completely personal choice I realize. Depending on how you yourself move, and how your subjects move, I’ve found that I’ll try to play with all three lenses that I own. I have a tamron 10-24mm, tamron 28-75mm, and a canon 50mm f1.8. All three are useful and create very different “feels” when I shoot video with them, as they do when I shoot photos. I’m now looking for something closer to a 30mm f1.8..if I can find one that is similar and not too expensive. It might give me the right amount of room to capture the dancers without getting too far away from the like i need to do with the 50mm. Who knows. No matter what I get, I can always find something or see something that my friends have that I like more.
This clip is just an example of the playing around I’ve been doing with my new canon 60 D. It’s really just a bunch of shots… not trying to focus on the dancing persay. The focus skills need work, as well as better movement on the part of the videographer and many other details. Still, I think the result is pretty dramatic compared to the typical hand held camcorders we’ve all been using.
This is what my typical montage hd clip looked like in the past.
Then way back, pre HD.. they looked like this:
I think the progression in the quality of the video is pretty obvious, don’t you? I’ve noticed more and more footage showing up of poppers lately that has had the same quality jump. I plan to take full advantage of the toys that I can afford to add to my arsenal and keep developing this craft. It’s mad fun.
3 days. 3 marathon days. All captured with video and photos here… well, maybe not all of it, but quite a bit. I still have many hours of video to edit, but here is something for you to digest in the meantime.
The “MGF In Your System Tour” was a somewhat ambitious idea. We would visit 3 major metropolitan areas in the northeast within a 48 hour time period. It would start with Boston, have a midway point in NJ, followed by a final one in our hometown of DC. This involved a lot of driving and ambitious scheduling. In almost every case, we just made it to the venues with a few seconds to spare. It all began on Thursday night, with an airport pickup. Bionic and Slim both arrived within 2 hours of each other from separate departure cities, San Fransisco and LA respectively. In the evening, we consolidated and got a quick barbecue dinner… and I picked up a bag full of cornbread for the road. We took a moment to film a pre-tour-shoutout. Bionic has a future in infomercial acting if he wants it. Peep it here:
The plan was to get a good nights sleep before driving. Well, that didn’t happen. For pretty much dorky reasons, all of us stayed up and frittered away precious sleep time with “hangout” time. I think the four of us averaged about 2 hours of sleep each when we met at 7 am Friday morning.
Our road trip began with 4 very tired guys piling up into Carlo’s lexus..which at this point was squeaky clean..just the way his OCD self likes it. Bionic packed for what seemed to be an African Safari rather than a 2 day trip. Not sure what he was thinking… but it did give us the opportunity to give him grief the entire trip.
8 hours of driving later, we arrived in Boston. We were immediately struck by the serpentine nature of the tunnels and apparent lack of signage. The GPS was not altogether helpful either. We attempted to head “straight” to the hotel. Luckily for Bionic and Slim, they were able to sleep at least for a few hours during the car trip. Carlo and I stayed awake taking turns driving. Greg G’Li, one of our local contacts, met us at the hotel at 4:30, and was basically our chaperone for the rest of the night. He was a great help to us. The roads of Boston are notoriously difficult to navigate. We would have been in trouble on our schedule without him. We had arranged the first workshop to take place at Boston University. The space was HUGE, big enough to have a small jam. It had bleachers on one side, and the ceilings were easily 20 feet high. Not a bad place to start the tour off. We were running late, but as would be expected, so were the students. Boston turned out to be our highest turnout, at 28 participants. There were many familiar faces. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwoyang/5499137047/in/set-72157626092606475/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwoyang/5499768582/in/set-72157626092606475/
The workshops went well. Bionic and Slim decided to deviate slightly from our published format of the 3 workshops. Originally it was going to be an hour of Bionic covering groove and boog, then an hour of both of them covering hitting and pop technique, followed by an hour of Animation with Slim. They elected to move hitting drills to the first hour and teach that together. It worked out.
The closing hour had some great session time. Here are the some clips with both instructors doing their thing. You can see the very different styles the two of them have. This was one of the great things about the pair of them teaching together. Bionic demonstrated his incredible ground work every set.
Slim wrecked this set and gave a clear demonstration of the animation skills he came to share.
The sessions were great, and many poppers from Boston showed their skill. A fair number of beginners were on hand too. It was a good example of how organized that scene is. Many thanks to the dancers in Boston for bringing the energy and vibe to our first day.
A LITTLE DRAMA
One thing that did happen which ended up resulting in a fair amount of tension was the arrival of the local dancer Fadayz, 5 minutes before we were about to close shop. He immediately wanted to battle, and called out Bionic. This didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but I learned later that this exchange had happened between he and Bionic several times since 2001. Bionic looked at me before it started and said, “This is the type of battle no one wins.” I wasn’t sure at first what Bionic meant, but I soon did. Fadayz seemed to be angry and hostile from the get go. I was a little surprised because it had been a while since I’d seen Fadayz. Usually I’d run into him at the House Dance Conference. He was always pretty chill when I saw him. Well not tonight! To make a long story short..the battle didn’t last long before it digressed into Fadayz venting verbally on many people in the room. We decided to leave at that point..no disrespect to our hosts in Boston. It just made sense to step before it got worse. Slim Boogie actually did try to calm things down and offered to exchange with Fadayz just to satisfy the moment, give Fadayz some session time. It helped somewhat, but only to a point. There was still some bad energy in the room. Bionic said it best at that moment, “This isn’t fun for me anymore.”
Leaving was a little difficult, mainly because the blood pressure had already gone up in the room. It is at those times that I have no problem being the old guy in the room and pulling the plug. Carlo and I already had one event with J Smooth end badly in the past. I wasn’t about to add another one to our list. The last thing I wanted was for us have yet another one of our events end up on WCP. We left without a hitch. Shoutout to Snap (local Boston popper) for helping to keep the peace as well. He handled the situation well. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of my video or camera equipment out at that point. We were literally about to leave and it just happened. I think some local people captured the footage. In my opinion, it wasn’t really worth watching mainly because it had such a bad vibe. Maybe it will appear on youtube. If it does, please add the link to a comment on this blog.
***Little addendum: I’ve been contacted by some people that don’t agree with my take on it, and in fact feel that it was 4 to 1 battle. Carlo did get up and “battle” after Bionic, but that was in my opinion, a knee jerk reaction Carlo had to the situation. It wasn’t really a battle anymore in my opinion. Then Slim exchanged…but only after it seemed like he could calm things down a bit. I did not participate. I focused on packing and getting us out of there so we could finally get some dinner and sleep. I fully acknowledge I’m not perfect and you may disagree with how I see this last 5 minutes. I can respect that you may have seen it differently. This is just my opinion of what I saw during that time. I’m not saying Fadayz is a bad person or anything. Please feel free to share your take on the comments. I won’t argue with you, just have your say and keep the tone civil.***
On a funny note, it turns out later that it was Slim Boogie who told Fadayz to stop by and session. He was apparently unaware of past tensions. Checkout Bionic’s reaction.
Next on the agenda, a “quick” trip into NYC to stop at a UNIQLO in Soho, store all of us wanted to visit. As many of you know, this is a Japanese clothing chain. There is only one store in the USA, and it is in NYC. Many poppers know it because of the famous video made by the crew UMIN for a UNIQLO ad, a few years back. The clothing is awesome, and cheap. However, it is not available online. For days, we had been talking about going to this store before the workshop. As was the case the night before, we stayed up too late… AGAIN… for no reason but to hangout. We were planning on leaving Boston by 8 am..well that turned into 11 am. Our trip to Uniqlo still happened, but it was rushed. I think it is safe to say that all of us would like to go back again. The clothing, the look, is awesome. I’m going to put an entry in my other blog about it soon. We all walked out with bags, as you can see here.
I think if Bionic and I had the choice, we would have stayed a couple more hours. Carlo kept us on track though. He was a very good headmaster.. constantly tracking us down in this huge store. Carlo was right to be concerned..we were behind schedule. New Jersey awaited… and the clock was ticking. Ah..the price we pay for fashion.
After much prodding, we finally were able to move out of the store and head to NJ. We were running mad late, but we manged to get there in the nick of time..well maybe a 10 minutes late in all honesty. There it is, the truth comes out New Jersey. We were late because of shopping. Sorry! Our bad. If it’s any consolation we really really liked our purchases. We were still busy pulling all our crap out of the car and Bionic’s ridiculous luggage as the workshops were officially starting.
The location of the 2nd day workshops was this great space at Creative Image Dance Studio. I had seen the space before on youtube many times from some battles that my friends had posted. It was much bigger in person. It had a very cool art deco feel to it’s decor.The students were already waiting and ready when we arrived.
It was my first time meeting studio owner Will Barrientos. It turned out he is also a budding photographer. He noticed my stabilizer harness and we started to talk shop. It turns out he had many cool toys that I don’t have yet, like a flycam, and a slider. Before you all roll your eyes into the back of your head..these toys make the videos of the dancers look almost 200 percent better. Those of you who have followed my video clips in the past probably can tell that the quality of the videos in this article are much better. Check out my post about the video projects too if you get a chance.
Bionic and Slim got to work right away. This space, though large enough, was quite a bit smaller than the huge space we got before. Bionic’s ground work section burned some serious calories. Everyone’s core temperature went up and the studio started to steam up. I had to wipe condensation of my lenses it was so steamy. Nothing wrong with a little sweat for the dancers!
Again, Slim and Bionic put in some great sets, showing slightly different flavors of movement every run. Here are two of the runs that have a different vibe than the ones from Boston shown earlier. Bionic’s is shown here.
Slim showed some small detail work in this set. Sorry, my focus work wasn’t quite as good on this clip. It might have been because of the lens steaming up.
My friend Sugaloo and his other what the funk dance crew members where there, as well as some other dancers I knew such as Big Phil and Sean. Like Boston, New Jersey had familiar faces as well as new. It was a fantastic group. I had a really good time getting down in the sessions here.
So after the workshops were done, we took our starving bodies over to White Castle. Here we are all gathered around the drive thru trying to make an order without being in our cars. It didn’t work. For some reason the White Castle Lobby wasn’t open, so we were all eating outside on the curb.
This chain doesn’t exist in DC or LA, so it was an “opportunity” for us to go get stuffed. I took this literally. I got it in my head to try to duplicate what Harold and Kumar did, although I didn’t remember the number. I ordered a crave case of 30 burgers..thinking I could polish it off. Well, I was not able to do it. I had to stop at 18. I could have done 20, but it was already starting to feel like I needed a bathroom.
Ugh… ugh.. ugh.. ugh… onto the next thing. FYI, I paid for this meal later, about 40 hours to be exact. Use your imagination.
TIME SQUARE
I stumbled my way to the car, and we airlifted my cheeseburger stuffed body back to NYC. Slim had never been to Time Square, so we decided it was a good time to go back. It was already past midnight, and we were about 45 minutes away from the city. We figured we could get some quick time in walking around and take some cool pics before heading back to DC. This part turned out to be amazingly cool. The weather had started to warm up a little, and it was a perfect night. The traffic wasn’t too bad either. We took a lot of cool photos, some of which would be useful for Bionic and Slim to use for future promotions. I’ve included two of them here. If you want to see more of them, just click got to my the set on flickr.
There was also this really funny ad for Forever 21 which basically had a camera aimed at Times Square. People could see themselves on a giant screen. It was like playing Where’s Waldo, but finding yourselves. I’ve captured the images of us on the screen. If you look carefully, you can see Carlo messing around and interacting with the model on the video.
One dude decided to streak the screen..and I caught some shots of him too. We heard a lot of laughing, and I looked behind us and this dude had stripped down to some really strange looking underwear. It looks like cut of denim tights…or something. Care to tell me what it is?
This part of the trip was a lot of fun. There is nothing like Time Square at night is there? Street performers, bright lights, cops, just late night people in general. It is a different thing altogether. We were tired, but for this short visit to NYC, it was well worth staying up a little later. This shot right here is one of the only ones from the entire tour wear Bionic, Slim, Carlo, and I actually were in a picture together. Considering how few of them there were, this turned out well. I’m pretty happy we got this one although we look like we are 10 feet tall thanks to the 10-24 lens I used.
DAY 3: HOMEBASE in DC
It was an exhausting drive home. We were already sleep deprived for 2 days, but we only had a little further to push. 4 hours and home. At this point, we were pretty much zombies. Slim and Bionic tried their best to rest as we made our way back. I don’t really have much video or photography here. We were all barely registering on the life meter. We pulled into my driveway in Bethesda at about 7 am. Funny thing? Carlo and Bionic didn’t see this. As soon as I got to the front door, it opened, and there was my buddy, Mark Flux (a sick popper that some of you don’t know about..yet). He was playing Dead Space 2, waiting for us to get back. It was a very welcome surprise. As tired as we were, we stayed up and hung out with Mark for another 2 hours. Mark handed the XBOX controller over, and Slim got on Dead Space 2, and friggin killed it. Apparently, he’s sick at video games too. Some of you don’t know that. After that, we crashed hard and didn’t wake up till around 5 pm. The last workshop was soon to follow.
DC DANCE COLLECTIVE
In the Friendship Heights area of DC, our last stop was our home base and eclectic studio DCDC. We recently had our friends J Smooth and Junior Boogaloo there. The Wiggles workshop had just happened a few weeks before. The school is no stranger to poppers. The student base was the most eclectic in terms of both demographics of age and backgrounds. We had belly dancers, people in class above 40 years of age, and many dancers of different levels.
You can see the studio has a lower ceiling than the others we’d been two previously. The spaces kept getting cozier and cozier. Not pictured here is my studio space, Studio G, which is even smaller.
It was definitely the most diverse group in any of the cities on the tour. A student from the DC Dance Collective, Diane, actually did something really nice and made cookies for Bionic and Slim’s visit. Apparently, this is a first! They were really good too. She made enough for the whole class.Thanks so much Diane. I was really proud of her. She also danced during the cypher.
One great treat was to have Mark Flux in the classes with us. His dancing is really something to if you haven’t seen it. Check out his solo from the class here. My inclusion of his clip here in no way inferes there weren’t other great dancers in the workshops..there definitely were. Mark however, is quite unique. I’m fairly sure Slim and Bionic would agree.
Overall, the workshop and session at DCDC was a nice way to round out the tour. It is a very cozy type of studio, with couches in the waiting area. It feels like being in someones home, which is the way studio owner Nancy Newell likes it. Bionic and Slim both pointed out that DC feels like chillin with family as well, since this was a 3rd visit for Bionic, and 2nd visit for Slim.
No evening if dance is complete with our group in DC without one of 2 things. Either Silver Diner in Rockville, or in this case, HONEY PIG in Annandale! Luckily for us, this treasure of a restaurant was closing at 2am on a Sunday night. Where else could we get great Korean BBQ and Soju at that time of night? This was a highlight of the visit for all of us.
We LOVE Honeypig. It is great food, lemme tell you. If you haven’t tried it and you are local to DC, you should go. It is very reasonably priced. Our group had about 10 people that night, and we got stuffed and drank for a total of $330 bucks. That’s not much at all for that quality of food.
The place is authentically Korean too. If you know anything about Annandale, which is a suburb outside of DC, you know that it is populated by almost 50,000 Korean people. It is one of the largest Korean communities outside of Korea itself. I can safely say that I did have a hangover the next morning… and a meat coma. I can’t speak for the rest, but I think being sleep deprived certainly didn’t help. In my case, I was also stacking about 1.5 pounds of Korean BBQ on top of 18 cheeseburgers that had not yet been purged from my system. Here was a final shot of us leaving Honey Pig. This is my popping fam here. There are a few people missing, but this is a good representation.
This completed the MGF In Your System Tour. The next day, which I was not present for due to work, was pretty much resting and practicing at Studio G. Slim and Bionic did visit certain places in DC..like Ben’s Chili Bowl. Look for posts from LifeXHipHop for these and other clips captured by Carlo on his new flip camcorder. I look forward to that work. I will also be putting together a video blog summary of this visit. I have lots of footage captured. Many of the dancers that we ran into are in my files, and I’ll be posting those soon as well. For all of you that have been asking for the footage of yourselves..its coming soon. Keep an eye on my youtube channel.
CLOSING THOUGHTS AND SHOUTOUT
This was collectively between MGF, lifeXhiphop, and Studio G our first collaboration that involved a significant amount of planning that spanned longer than a 24 hour event. This is not to say that planning jams and workshops in the past wasn’t involved, it was. This was something entirely different though. Being on the road together, watching the workshops fit each city differently, was a learning experience for us. I think the response we got from the different towns has been generally positive and we look forward to doing more collaborations together. We sum it up in a small..bleary eyed pre departure shoutout here. If you don’t see a link on your phone, then click this hyperlink.
This is probably a familiar sight for most of my friends
Any of you who know me at all are very familiar with the constant uploads of videos and photos that come from my flickr and youtube accounts. As the years have gone by, my skills have been improving in each area. I have many interests in the medium, including capturing my travels, my excursions into natural scenic areas. However, nothing has been giving me more focus in this than dance.
Dancers are fascinating subjects, with so many challenges. They are like moving paintings. In a world where the economy is also chewing up dancers and spitting them out.. photo and video projects can be a useful tool in keeping people viable and employable. I hope to help my friends with this hobby of mine, to create some noteworthy projects. At the very least, I realize that these types of documentation are what we are always thankful to have as we get older. Some of my younger dance friends may not feel that sort of nostalgia yet. I only wish that someone captured my earlier martial arts years in this fashion. We just didn’t have the tools so easily available when I was young.
I’m just a hack.. getting into this hobby through a bit of fumbling. I have a few friends that are far better amateurs, and some professionals. I plan to learn from them when I can. I’ve been looking at many DIY and How To videos on youtube. I’ve also been looking at examples of other people’s work on youtube.. first time projects, things of that sort. It really is pretty impressive what we can do now.. pre post. It is that area that I’m delving more into at the moment. I don’t yet have the PC setup (or MAC) for the software that I ultimately want to use. I’m focusing more on the camera/camcorder hardware. I wouldn’t say that I have an endless budget at all. I’m definitely sinking a good amount of money into this..more than most of my friends. However, I know that my budget pales in comparison to what my professional friends have put into it. For example, I don’t have a full frame DSLR..I just got the Canon 60D. It is not entry level, but it is not even the top of the prosumer level cameras like the 7D. It falls in the middle.
Studio G in the DMV 