Miscellaneous supercuts, talks, contributions to group projects, and such
We Asked A Bot to Name 18 Video Essays
The Essay Library Anthology Vol. 4
[A Micro-Essay Compilation]
This video is a collection of 60-second video essays created by members of the Essay Library discord community (linked below!). For this collaboration, we each chose a title generated by the Video Essay Title Bot (on Twitter @videoessaytitle) and went wherever it told us to go. Strap in and visit the randomized vistas of insanity and illumination that the Bot sent us to!
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXJ1juaozPc
A short gaming essay on a weird but marvelously elegant pattern I found while messing around with Absurdle, a 'knockoff' of Wordle that changes its answer as you play to avoid whatever letters you've guessed. Try it here: https://qntm.org/files/wordle/index.html
Gaming, when done right, ought to be a form of essayism: an attempt to tinker with inputs and strategies until you find out how it works, and how to make it do stuff that its creators never intended.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6_1uyjGE-o
a video by Max Tohline
2021
5 minutes
An effort to encapsulate Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (1980) in one word. Part of Ariel Avissar's TV Dictionary series, here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8660446
a video by 17 creators
2021
19 minutes
The Essay Library discord server invited creators to contribute micro-essays (1 minute apiece), which they collected into this anthology. Mine is the second in the list and starts at 1:11, but you should just hit play and watch them all.
Playlist link (with individual video links): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8nkNAU9qB4dVJ2Oy5t-R27dMbH1A_93
Just my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcKyDXIqCuY
Full compilation link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meiwn6-NApk
Sources for my contribution:
The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1923)
Bazin, Andre. "The Ontology of the Photographic Image," 1945
At Land (Maya Deren, 1944)
Big Little Lies S1 E3: Living the Dream (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2017)
Kino-Eye (Dziga Vertov, 1924)
The Cameraman (Buster Keaton, 1928)
La Cartomancienne (The Fortune Teller) (Jerome Hill, 1932)
Olympia, Part II: Fest Der Schonheit (Leni Riefenstahl, 1938)
The Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1960)
Sargent, Epes. W. "Comedy Relief." in Movie Makers Magazine, Volume IV, February 1929, p. 124
S.A. Girl Divers (British Pathé, 1943), youtu.be/1n28188vc1U
The Reflecting Pool (Bill Viola, 1977)
music video for Danny Wilson's The Second Summer of Love (1989)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Simon West, 2001)
music video for Beyoncé's Hold Up (Jonas Åkerlund, 2016)
Resident Evil: Retribution (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2012)
Shriners Hospitals for Children: Love to the Rescue - Tori (Leo Burnett (agency), 2013)
Samsung Galaxy S9 Official TVC Remix Your Everyday (Samsung, 2018), youtu.be/z6gedDEBKxU
Time (Garrett Bradley, 2020) (probably the only film that could possibly live up to that name)
a video by Max Tohline
2020
9 minutes
In 2020, James Grime and some other Math YouTubers put out the call for anyone who wished to upload a video celebrating their favorite number greater than one million. I couldn't resist participating with my choice: 10,112,359, 550,561,797, 752,808,988, 764,044,943, 820,224,719
Links mentioned in the video:
My sequences in the OEIS
Neil Sloane's lecture that mentions one of my sequences
Robert Dougherty-Bliss's brilliant response to that sequence
That algorithmic experimental film, and another one
My article in Bright Lights Film Journal that discusses how mass ideology might be analyzed via trends in the history of the IMDb Top 250
a supercut by Max Tohline
2017, rev. 2020
4 minutes
It's well-known that director John Ford loved the hymn "Shall We Gather at the River," but for some reason I couldn't find a compilation online of all his films that use it. So I put this together. This video contains a clip from every other John Ford film (that I know of) that features Shall We Gather at the River. If you find another, please let me know. Featuring:
Tobacco Road (1941)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950)
Wagon Master (1950)
7 Women (1966)
Stagecoach (1939)
The Searchers (1956)
another clip from Tobacco Road (1941) for good measure
3 Godfathers (1948)
Note: Shall We Gather at the River shows up twice in The Searchers (I've only included it once) and what seems like a dozen more times in Tobacco Road. Twice felt like enough.
Thanks again to commenter Kristijan Golubović for pointing out the instance in When Willie Comes Marching Home.
a supercut by Max Tohline
2015
4 minutes
Selections from 5 Decades of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts.
Every year, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra gives a New Year's concert, and every year they close with Johann Strauss Sr.'s Radetzky March, and every year the conductor conducts the audience in clapping along with it. Here's a compilation of 21 performances from around Youtube.
(I wonder what Bakhtin would say about the chronotope of the same piece in the same concert hall, performed year after year, collaged together like this?)
a compilation by Max Tohline
2014
1 minute
A quick split-screen comparison of 6 different hammers used by major orchestras in the performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 6 "Tragic."
Featuring Michael Tilson Thomas & WDR Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado & Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Bernard Haitink & Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein & Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Paavo Järvi & Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Hee-Chuhn Choi & Korean Symphony Orchestra.
a long-form supercut by Max Tohline
2014
32 minutes
For the occasion of her April 2014 wedding, my sister asked me to put together a supercut of wedding and relationship clips from movies to play on a loop in a room adjacent to the reception for people (like me) who might like a break from the hubbub.
As soon as I started putting clips together, the project began to balloon well beyond what she wanted, taking a bizarre and at times curiously hybrid form. Though I ended up cutting it down for her actual wedding reception, I've chosen to upload my "director's cut" here to Vimeo. At times funny, at times touching, and at times encyclopedic, there's plenty here to enjoy and to reflect upon. I hope you'll watch it all.
The title refers at once to an ancient concept of marriage ("the two shall become one," thus 1 + 1 = 1) and a somewhat less ancient concept of film montage (that the cut will create a meaning beyond the meaning of the two shots by themselves, thus 1 + 1 = 3).
Thanks to Penny Lane for making The Voyagers (here), to György Pálfi for making Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, and to Tim Dirks for his useful best-of lists at filmsite.org.
Titles listed at the end of the video.
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/92108543
