Acting Reference : Key & Peele Jazz Fit Championship

April 28th, 2016

I absolutely love this fun little piece of reference! Created by Key & Peele, its about the 1987 Jazz Fit Championships, which, surprisingly, were actually a thing.

First of all, their entrance dance is incredibly fun for animation. But perhaps what is most interesting is that if you tried to re-create their dances starting at around 0:21 seconds, it would most likely look robotic. They have very synchronized movements, just like the original championships—- this largely involves “twinning” of the limbs.

A frame by frame check will reveal an insane amount of overlapping action that is actually very offset from the body particularly on the head! This is done for comedic timing obviously, but watching Key’s head as he shakes his fists in twinning actions, you really see the disparity of timing between his head and body.
At 0:23 you can see his head “pop” over one frame. Something that one would fix in the graph editor in Maya. As you progress through that check out the awesome arcs his shoulders do!

At 1:11 he is essentially doing a pose-to-pose, but it is an interesting study because of the settle between poses, WHILE continuing on action. Also interesting to note that all the movement he is doing really centers you on his face, which he keeps fixated to a primary expression, holding “keys” on the expression, as it eases out and then pops to a new facial expression. I think this is interesting because often we do the opposite—- focusing a lot on the movements, the noise, and less on the comedic subtleties of the silent, the still.

At 3:09 there is a lot of fun, subtle acting as he keeps the primary expression but slowly changes it to show his registration of the culprit, as he continues and must keep dancing! Love it! Its interesting because there is a significant progression, but its so slow and subtle while being so comically off the top, that it makes for a really fun mix of movements.

Watch it on the Anilyzer!