Group Project Commentary

J.D. Mink:
My process in selecting video clips was rather simple. I decided first to strictly use cartoon clips in the video project. I searched the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) for cartoon clips which were in the public domain. I compiled cartoons by searching the Archive for themes rather than by identifying particular cartoons or characters to include prior to selecting specific clips. I had no intention of selecting cartoons for inclusion which I found to be thematically related.
As I watched the cartoons, I made note of scenes which particularly seemed to stand alone—in other words, scenes which had self-contained plot content not crucial to the overall plot of the story. I found many of these in each selection, especially as the early 20th century cartoons were sporadic in nature, constantly shifting from general plotline to subplot and secondary material.
I first wanted to select a cartoon that had something to do with adventure. Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937) came up as a search result. I was familiar with the cartoon, but had not watched in sometime prior to reviewing it for the project. I felt that the scenery and detailed illustrations made the cartoon a particularly worthy selection.
I looked at both the Little Audry cartoon, “Goofy Goofy Gander” (1950) and the Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoon “Billion Dollar Limited.” (1942). Due to their age, I think there is a great deal of similarity in their animation and artistry; their content however is quite different. I found the teacher in “Goofy Goofy Gander” to have particularly noir qualities. There was something quite dated about her appearance and mannerisms which paired well with the portrayal of Lois Lane in “Billion Dollar Limited.”
I also found rewarding scenes in “Hep Cat Symphony” (1949), a cartoon about a fight between musically-inclined animal housemates…a saxophone-playing cat and an orchestra of mice who live in the wall.
The content and nuances in the Popeye selection were unmistakably representative of the Popeye series. Popeye contains humor unlike any other cartoon. The animation was quite similar to that in the Felix the Cat cartoon, “Neptune Nonsense” (1936).
I also attempted to gather scenes which did not feature the main characters in the cartoons. This was an especially important technique in cartoons such as Popeye—it allowed me to focus specifically on the secondary scenes which would stand out in our presentation if isolated. I also feared that the cartoon’s secondary qualities and the artists’ undertones might be overshadowed if I attempted to portray characters in scenes which contained main characters such as Popeye or Olive Oil.
I made few suggestions about connections which I found between specific clips. As I did not make the final determination on which clips would be included in the cut, I left that to the discretion of Elizabeth, who volunteered to edit the video. I did not consult other members of my group prior to selecting specific clips. We each located clips independently which we thought would be best suited to the theme of the project.

Gordon Marshall Bigsby:
Our project was somewhat ambitious in that we had intended on putting together various, unrelated scenes from different movies/cartoons to see if we could create an output that flowed quite nicely. The catch is that this was completely uncoordinated since our project was divided into several parts. After JD and I independently selected our scenes, Elizabeth would put them together without input from us. Elizabeth had no way of knowing what we were going to send to her, and we had no way of knowing how she was going to arrange the scenes. The same applies to the work that JD and I did: he did not know what I was working on and the same was true for me.

To stay within legal limits, I stuck to Archive.org and found a mixture of movie and cartoon scenes. JD and I were only required to find a total of five scenes, but we were not told to find any particular scenes from any time period or place. It was, as you might imagine, a stab in the dark. My emphasis was on finding scenes that would make sense on their own—exactly what JD had done. I went for a combination of different factors. I knew I wanted to find ones that would work well as intro and ending scenes. Furthermore, I tried to locate scenes that contained different emotions (happy, sad, etc.) along with humorous and scary content. I was hoping Elizabeth would have a good range of material to work with. To make things a little easier, I noted the scene start and end times so she would be able to locate the exact scene immediately.