bironic

Try, Try Again

Last but not least. All these vids were done and there were still two weeks until go-live. Surely time for one more treat? It wasn't like I had anything else to do. So I surfed people's Dear Festividder letters for ideas and found thingswithwings's request for the Netflix Black-teens-invent-a-time-machine movie See You Yesterday, about which she wrote, "I really hope someone makes a vid for this one."

I watched the movie, I liked the movie, the themes were timely and important—the seeming inescapability of police brutality for Black communities, the generational loss of family and friends to violence, the enduring passion to effect change—and it's always nice to vid science geeks and non-white characters. Plus, thingswithwings didn't have any treats at that point, although by the time this got done, she had three others. So it goes.

Straightaway I grabbed the footage and a ticking clock sound effect, which I thought would be good for the time trope and for building a sense of suspense or urgency. I imagined a vid in which all the loops built and built and mixed and repeated and worked with and against the relentless tick tick tick. I laid down the first sequence. I laid down a second, then ripped it up. Again. Again. Something wasn't working. I didn't know how to get from setup to climax. The monotonous clock necessitated using as few clips as possible, lest people (read: I) get bored or impatient. The project stalled.

For a week and a half, I kept opening the Premiere file and closing it again. I wanted the vid to exist, but my brain didn't want to make it. Finally, the day before go-live, I threw out the clock and dumped in this slow-build piano track from the "maybe vid this one day" pile. I'd always figured I'd use it for a murder mystery or something, but it did the trick here. Suddenly the sequences started working. I didn't even have to adjust the existing clips much. The piano drove the narrative instead of fighting with it. I snipped lots of little pieces from the music to suit the pace the vid wanted to follow. And the draft got done at 8 or 9 p.m., hallelujah.

Internal critic: Could the movie's themes have been made more apparent in the vid? Could the vid have benefited from clearer editing or more powerful statements? Could it have balanced the pain and violence with more clips of support and love? Could I have found uses for cyclical symbols like Sebastian's whirling power saw? Yes. But it exists in the world, and I got a little better at problem solving. I like how the last sequence recontextualizes scenes from the movie to hinge on that pivotal moment when someone has the choice between violence and de-escalation. It's a different way of depicting the ambiguity of the movie's final images between hope/optimism and despair/pessimism that thingswithwings said she likes.

(It's just as well the clock didn't work out, since I later learned the official trailer used one. But it's too bad I didn't leave myself enough time to search for—and haven't cultivated enough working knowledge to have at the ready—perfect music by a Black artist.)

Watch on the AO3 or

"Try, Try Again" (Watch on Vimeo)

Music: "Cloudburst" by George Winston (edited)
Content notes: police brutality, gun violence, character death, racism, grief/mourning
Audiovisual notes: flickering light, esp. at :03, :07-12, 1:24-1:26 and 1:33; shaky cam + three clips in a row that repeat a panning motion; visual reference to Black Lives Matter


I'm glad livrelibre made a See You Yesterday vid for the collection, too: Rise Up. They work nicely as a pair, I think. Hers lets the footage breathe, and she gives more attention to the love and support between CJ & friend Sebastian and CJ & her brother Calvin & their mother.