I have never been much predisposed to believe in karma, but my newfound fondness for / obsession with “fail” videos has me looking over my shoulder and considering the Greater Forces. I predict that if there are truly any laws of karmic balance governing our universe, I will shortly fall victim to some sort of terrific personal disaster, one which will be videotaped, uploaded, and viralled by dozens (if not hundreds) of dispassionate onlookers. I suppose it is less likely that I will be killed (snuff fail is not my thing) than that I will be monumentally inconvenienced, injured, or embarrassed publically, which is (in its way) fair and just. I cackled when the fat woman fell down, too.
There are two types of “fail” videos, by and large. The first type concerns events where exceptional calamity, perhaps somewhat foreseeable but not terrifically predictable, befalls the shlubbs and doorstops of life’s meat-grinder (perhaps the finest example being this monumental, extensive, and highly amazing collapse of an entire warehouse due to a single, inadvertent lurch of a forklift).
The second type, however is the more humanistically personable: the “WTF were they thinking” or “what did they think was going to happen” or “Jesus, what were they trying to achieve there?!” visual disasters that come of stunts gone wrong, choices disastrously made, consequences not clearly thought out. The sorts of incidents that give us the Darwin Awards also, in less lethal form, give us this category of video. In this category, Firework Nutshot Fail is my favourite.
Firework Nutshot Fail is my favourite because it is both entirely singular – I would argue that nothing like this could ever be conceived and created intentionally – and yet flawlessly crafted. It is an example of visual storytelling par excellence to such a degree in its thirty seconds that many three-hour movies (I’m looking at you, Kingdom of Heaven) are less satisfying by direct comparison. Because its craft is entirely accidental, it is a categorical triumph of the magic of serendipity.
I’ll examine the clip in agonizing detail, with the aid of screencaptures. As I will be discussing the clip’s merits as visual storytelling, I will not be commenting on the clip’s explosive, exultant audio – although that is certainly a magnificent part of the charm, as well.
1. Setting the scene
Let us take a moment to consider the scene. First, it is magic hour, that slice of dusk that motion picture craftspeople have justifiably exhorted for its inherent pictorial splendour; famously, Terrence Malick filmed much of Days of Heaven at this time of day, in spite of the difficulties of working exclusively in a single gloaming hour. Here, we are in the very tail of magic hour; light has nearly left the sky. And yet, there is enough shadow detail left over to allow us to clearly delineate the events that take place, while simultaneously allowing for a sufficiently darkened, blue-cast frame that when the firework ignites, its jet of day-glo colour provides a pleasing visual counterpoint.
Second, the framing is, if predictable (how else would an amateur videographer have framed this?), nonetheless unintentionally integral. The two cars upon which the young man is standing are perfectly balanced frame-left and frame-right (they’re even the same colour), while the man himself creates a perfect apex in the center of frame and bisects the frame laterally with his upper body. Most importantly of all, his penis and testicles are precisely positioned at the dead center of frame. This, of course, will prove important.
Also, let’s take this opportunity to address the “WTF were they thinking” factor, which is a large part of the clip’s success. Given that we can presume from the reactions of the bystanders and cameraperson that the events videotaped are the non-optimaloutcome of the action being undertaken, we must therefore contemplate what the optimal outcome would have been. I honestly can’t manage an adequate guess, and have no theories. The young man receiving the nutshot is clearly intending to receive it, and is being prepared for his duty in the frame capped above. By any reckoning I can summon, there is no desirable, likely outcome of firing an incendiary at your own junk, and yet this gentleman has apparently disavowed himself of my pessimism. Firework Nutshot Fail presents such an intriguing personal disaster precisely because it seems so inherently without purpose: and yet rarely do men purposelessly shoot weapons at their own balls. This man is expecting something worthwhile: but what?
2. The Cast of Characters
In the intermediate seconds before the firework ignites, some bits of onscreen business inform us of the scene. A man in a red shirt (unintentional nod to Star Trek?) crosses frame in the plane closest to camera, while simultaneously, in the plane furthest from camera (i.e. beyond the plane of the principal action), a second man crosses frame in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, a shirtless man is igniting the firework beneath the stoic, anticipatory young man preparing to receive the nutshot. In scarce seconds of visual movement, the clip has told us volumes: we are likely at a party, a party of young people, a party of young people who don’t give much of a fuck about anything (hence the shirtlessness). There is a relaxed, even lazy, air about the proceedings: to these individuals, the nutshot is No Big Deal. Already the storytelling is compelling us to ask ourselves: will they see what they are expecting?
3. The Anticipatory Moment
The firework has been properly ignited, and the videographer has prepared himself to record the event. The camera wobbles loosely in his hand as he does so, while the miscellaneous supporting characters clear frame. We are returned, briefly, to the purity of the initial frame as the camera steadies itself for ignition. The firework glows like an aroused promise.
4. Ignition!
A visual marvel! The firework unleashes a perfect inverted mushroom cloud of beaten gold, which remains faithfully symmetrical in the initial framing as the firework darts upwards, impacting the crotch of the young man’s jeans. A gout of flame connects the man to the ground, where a disk of haloed hellfire continues to froth and spark. As mentioned above, the resulting contrast between the twilight blue exteriors, and the incandescent contrail of fire emitting from the young man’s balls, is quite visually pleasing. In terms of action eye candy, the harmonious balance of colours and tones, along with the vivid animation of the sparking pit itself, is the sort of thing that major studios spend tens of millions of dollars to achieve in post-production. Here, it has been captured live, by amateurs. A miracle of cinematic opportunity.
This segment of the clip is barely even a second long. For this second and this second only, no one involved as registered the presence of a problem. We must conclude, therefore, that this part of the event went as planned.
5. Crisis!
Something has gone wrong. The camera trembles with the rush of new adrenaline, while the young man onscreen wavers and clutches at his balls. In doing so, he reveals a significant piece of visual information: even though his body wriggles and moves appreciably during the next second or two of video, the firework remains stubbornly adhered to the young man’s pants. We can presume therefore that either a) the young man expected the firework to hit his pants but immediately bounce off, or b) he somehow expected the firework to be rather less intensely hot than it very obviously is. At this moment, the young man – now with a live firework semi-permanently attached to his genitals, which is in no danger of going out, and with scarce seconds left before the firework inevitably explodes – begins, understandably, to panic.
6. Action!
It is at this precise moment that the clip switches gears. This immediate uprooting of expectation has a profoundly pleasurable effect on the audience – we have turned a corner here from a visual perspective, and new rules are at play. Until this point, aside from some natural human restlessness, both figure and frame were classically positioned and stock-still. Now, suddenly, the young man with the firework on his testicles undertakes the only natural action expectable in his terror, and leaps backwards – away from camera – off his perch in an attempt to dislodge the firework.
This use of the camera’s axis line to effect a pleasing act of staging is lovely. By leaping away from camera, the young man isolates himself in frame while simultaneously increasing his visual relationship to the frame as a whole. Now suspended in mid-air, he is anchored to nothing, and the entire frame is simply the phantasmagoria in which his personal crisis unfolds. Additionally, note the brilliantly performed bit of physical comedy of the leap itself – a kind of spasmodic donkey-kick of both legs as he attempts to defeat gravity, inevitably resulting in a minor stumble as he gracelessly attempts to gain the sidewalk upon plummeting back to earth.
Additionally to all of this, and importantly, the young man’s efforts have in no way affected the raging firework, which is now pinwheeling spectacular ribbons of flame from what is still, surprisingly, maintained even in midflight as the exact center of frame: his junk.
7. Visual Games
Landing and somehow maintaining his footing, and with that pesky firework stilltroubling his balls, the young man now changes direction just as abruptly as the clip changed gears in the previous instance: having tracked backwards along the camera line, he now tracks camera-left across the 90-degree line, a perpendicular move that will eke out the dramatics of the storytelling by putting him, in a moment, out of camera sight. This then heightens the intense comedic spectacle of…
8. The Explosion!
The apogee of the entire sequence of events, the explosion is a magnificent moment in the history of cinema, regardless of its pedigree. It is hilarious, and yet so loaded with precise detail that it can only be unpacked one element at a time:
a) It occludes the young man. Having stumbled behind the car in the previous instance, the young man is now completely overtaken by the fireball.
b) The fireball is massive. It is nearly the size of one of the cars. It entirely envelops and consumes the young man. There is a lurch in the pit of the viewer’s stomach, a mixture of thrill and dread: what has happened to him? Is he no more?
c) It is spectacular, in the literal sense. The fireball is pure spectacle. Exploding X-Wing fighters don’t put on shows like this. It is, after all, a firework exploding, a fact of which we are gleefully reminded by the contrails of flaming debris that starfish into the night, expelled from the white-hot center of the blast.
d) It is another unexpected colour-pop. Where the initial firework blast was a mix of gold and platinum, the firework blast is fringed by pure cherry red, immediately encapsulating the sense memories of a thousand summer Sundays, making out with girls, barbecues with beer, and that song by the Runaways.
e) It rocks the camera. The event is of sufficient magnitude that we rock n’ roll along with it – the camera jinks and weaves, emphasizing the scale of the explosion by way of what used to be called “starship acting.”
f) It moves the camera. At long last dislodged from his observant post on the road, the videographer is moved by terror to investigate the fate of the vanished young man. As with the young man in instance 6, the videographer uses the line of the camera to create visual momentum, tracking forward into the blast and between the cars.
9. Into the Unknown
In Campbellian terms, we are now in the belly of the whale. Our hero has been consumed and has vanished; he is Osiris, chopped into pieces and floating down the Nile towards unknown fate. As the audience, ours is now a feeling of dread concern, and we are truly destabilized in our expectations. This fact is perfectly mirrored by the camera, which loses all sense of visual control as it plunges headlong into the blast zone in a desperate search for the missing friend. The camera tracks forward, then turns the corner behind the car’s bumper and forward again. Through this action, it moves through three distinct clouds of fully-obscurantist smoke, while faceless party-goers run willy-nilly through and alongside frame, amping up the post-9/11 visual echoes and disaster movie theatrics.
The frame devolves into exceptional onscreen entropy, the side-effect of being sloppily hand-held by a videographer who is now too terrified to bother with the niceties of clean presentation. The effect is enhancing, however, churning the pot of the onscreen action into a frothing stew of visual chaos. And throughout this entire period of beats, the question – what happened to the young man? – is repeatedly, devastatingly frustrated. Every time we think we are coming upon an answer, another cloud of smoke clears to reveal nothing beyond it. Was the young man atomized? Blown to meat-chunks?
10. Faith, Resolution, and the Great River
Success! He has survived! And celebration ensues, a tawdry but enjoyable beat of low-brow humour as the young man struggles out of his incinerated pants revealing his bright-blue boxers (another colour pop) while merriment takes the place of bewilderment. Again, per Campbell, the requirement of all stories for a real or seeming “death” for its hero – followed by resurrection – has been fulfilled, and psychological catharsis perfectly attained.
Firework Nutshot Fail will never provide us answers to its critical, vexing questions, but it provides instead a scintillating screen story, vibrantly communicated in rich detail in less time than most television commercials take to shill soda pop and toilet paper. We may never know who the young masters of Firework Nutshot Fail were, but their contribution to cinema will be long remembered.
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