Whiplash x Ping Pong Video + Patreon Update

It’s been awhile since the last post so here’s the TLDR:

• Video’s Thesis: Dissecting the narratives around talent and our perception of what it means to be ‘great’.

• A bunch of technical and real life stuff got in the way that delayed this much longer than it should’ve. 

• I’ll be pausing the Patreon for this month (and for the foreseeable future) due to some life stuff and restructuring it.

Part 1

So hey! Here’s the latest video. The only thing missing thus far is some clean up on the audio and the Patreon credit. Nonetheless, this video is over an hour long so I hope you enjoy it! 

In short, the main gist of the video is about talent and ‘chasing your dreams’! And to be more specifics ,it's how a lot of narratives about talent / passion revolve around the difficulties that surround it. The mere possession of talent / passion will lead you down a difficult path; pushing you towards the desire to be 'great'. And that greatness is synonymous with ever-constant growth. A burden that you and your loved ones must suffer, assuming you had loved ones to begin with. And to temper one’s pursuit, for the sake of your relationships, may as well mean death to your soul.

Whiplash, The Fabelmans, I’m Thinking of Endings, Amadeus, Inside Lleweyn Davis, Marvelous Ms.  Maisel, freakin’ Freddy Got Fingered; and so much more! The amount of stories that use the template of ‘the tortured artist’ is abundant and I really go into it… but this is only the first 15 minutes of the video.

The rest of the video is dismantling the idea that being passionate / talented is a curse, untangling the idea that greatness isn’t synonymous with success. And to do this, I use Ping Pong the Animation as an example that juxtaposes the whole ‘passion is a curse’ narrative. Providing a ‘stop and smell the roses’ message similar to Pixar’s Soul, but with a lot more nuance by providing perspectives with its larger cast.

In essence, I showcase that Ping Pong presents passion not as a curse to bear, nor a thing that defines you as a person. It’s just one of the things that makes you whole. Your talent isn't a responsibility to master, but a skill to understand. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing greatness and growth, the issue only arises when you don’t understand why you do what you do. The issue is the lack of perspective. Afterall, what’s there to life in winning when you lack perspective?

This was probably one of the hardest scripts to write, due to how abstract talent and passion is. The assumed perceptions we have of these words led to me contradicting myself a lot in this script, or just being unclear with my points. I’ve found myself using ‘talent’ and ‘passion’ synonymously at times, but having to remind myself that these are two very different things, but they are coupled together so frequently due to how other narratives use them interchangeably.

So quite a few rewrites had to be made, probably just as much as my Detroit: Become Human and Disco Elysium scripts, all of which exceeded 10,000 words. Another parallel between this script and the Detroit script was the amount of material I needed to watch to reinforce my point. As a result, this video has the most references to other material I’ve done thus far. Unfortunately however this has delayed the video much more than I anticipated due to how a new perspective added another layer to my script - often causing significant restructuring in the editing process. .

Regardless, I’m pretty happy with the outcome. This is far beyond what this was originally supposed to be, The Smiling Friends season 2 subversion with earnestness, but remnants of that video's idea still persist here. Particularly the live action segments and the overarching sincerity of the script. I’m proud of what I’ve made, I just wish it took less time. 

PART 2

A part of me feels bad with how long this video took, since there aren't as many unique assets as there have been in my other videos - relative to the time spent on it. I felt like this was the script I spent the most time on because of how personal it felt compared to others, so I ended up being a lot more neurotic than usual. There are still things I’d like to change about the script, but I need to learn to let go at some point.

Especially since I said to myself that I wanted to take my time with this video, especially to honour Ping Pong’s message about perspective and tunnel vision. So to keep it inline with the show’s themes, I wanted to revisit some other hobbies / pursuits while not going ‘ALL IN’ the same way I did with my Scott Pilgrim Takes Off video. Making a bunch of assets for Takes Off was a way for me to say how much I love the franchise, so I thought forcing myself to scale back would be a good way to honour Ping Pong.

In hindsight, it ended up working out for me due to the rewrites and restructuring of the script. So instead of doing storyboards, I was just gonna edit on the fly. And instead of creating whole new assets for the video, was I gonna just use my streaming setup as a backdrop for this video. The one downside of this though was that the ‘WIP’ progress posts I used to do wouldn’t look all that interesting. Since it’d just look like a screenshot of my stream.

Though ultimately this tradeoff was worth it so I can be more flexible with the script and use a simpler program like Premiere Pro (hoping to transition into Davinci Resolve at some point in the year) and reduce the workload on both myself and my computer. Exporting projects on After Effects literally took hours afterall, so I wanted to escape that nightmare. 

And this all turned out great… until Premiere Pro decided to keep on messing up. Due to some technical difficulties, this video ended up being the most stressful to work with. For some reason, my computer just didn’t like working well on this project; constant stutters and display issues - sometimes getting blue screens out of nowhere. It doesn’t help that my graphics tablet decided to break, delaying commissions but y’all don’t need to hear me scream into the void. If any of you follow my instagram stories, you’ve seen how miserable it has been. Also YouTube’s copyright system caused a lot of ruckus with the footage I’m using, specifically the music. So finding suitable music that matched the scenes to some of my favorite stories was tough.

In short, everything was going smoothly until I hit the editing process. A countless amount of crashes and freezes stopping whatever amount of inertia of motivation I had going. It doesn’t help the fact that I hurt my hand sometime in January that stopped me from working editing for 2 weeks, and some personal life stuff got in the way, and now the first cyclone in 3 decades is about to hit my area??? Okay, thanks mother Earth, that’s cool of you to do. At least Monter Hunter Wilds is keeping me sane.

PART 3

Anyway, to get back on track. I don’t mean to complain but I just wanted to stress… this video has been a nightmare to work on. I’ve mentioned in a previous update that I wanted to try out new things, since I’ve personally hit a glass ceiling with video essays, which has led me to picking things I’ve dropped in the past. Particularly streaming and just making personal art for myself. And it’s been refreshing, and a sort of the ‘touch grass’ moment I needed.. The act of just doing things without the worry of having to relate to a bigger project, 

And due to how many technical issues I’ve faced during this video production alongside my personal interests shifting - I’ll be pausing the Patreon for now. I want to try new things and new video ideas but I can’t in good conscience let the Patreon be active whilst I figure this out. This is another good time to pause the Patreon as I’ll be overseas with my family for the first time in a decade for 2 weeks. So I’d like to spend that time with them instead of worrying about the Patreon. 

I’m not sure when I’ll reactivate the Patreon, it’ll be whenever I get around finding a format that fits in with my current interests - but until that time comes - Patreon will be put on pause. I appreciate the patience and support, deeply and truly. I’ve DM’d people months after they’ve commissioned me, and it’s always a surprise when people are so understanding with how much I’ve got on my plate. So, again, I appreciate any support that gets thrown my way, I hope y’all know I don’t take it for granted. 

Anyway, that’s it for now! Hope you enjoy the video and I hope the future turns out alright!