Jacob Krupnick Talks Girl Walk // All Day, His Epic Music Video Project

Krupnick at work

Is the video officially a wrap? I'm super excited to be done with filming, but a few major scenes remain. We've been working with a dance school for a month to arrange a film session within a ballet class. It's the opening shot of the film, but has managed to take the longest to coordinate.

There's actually a whole track in the album that will comprise of other dancers, cameos, and guests. My plan is to shoot these in bits and pieces once the editing gets going full time so that I have an excuse to get out of my chair once in a while.

You've been showing what you have at some screenings, what's the reception been like? Our initial public screening was at the Look3 Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia—a three-day photography festival curated by Kathy Ryan (from the NY Times Magazine) and Scott Thode (from the VII Agency). We shared a handful of new scenes from the film at the end of an evening filled with incredible and heavy photojournalism. We were all a little concerned about the reception, but the pavilion started immediately whooping and whistling, and pretty soon, people got to their feet.

After the first scene, Dai popped out and started tap-dancing on a wooden platform. Photographers started to rush the stage. Anne came out skipping from behind this crazy gigantic screen and there was a bit of a roar. They danced through the crowds as the other scenes played. The energy was stellar. Humongous smiles were glued to our faces for the whole night and next day -- it was truly surreal to have such a sense of shared excitement for the project and the desire for more.

Our next showing is this weekend at the Kickstarter Film Festival. As a New Yorker who's spent a lot of time these last few months really engaging with New York, I'm pumped to bring it home.

Photo by Jacob Krupnick

Any big plans for the big premiere of the full thing? Because Girl Walk is born in the streets, I'm most excited about showing it in public spaces: empty storefronts, public parks, the Highline, rooftops, etc. I love the idea of people bumping into the project in the same way that with any good urban experience, there are morsels of unexpected interest along your way.

As for a major premier: we need a big space where we can project the film in a way that's immersive—so with a number of projectors, and space for people to get funky if they feel moved to. Eyebeam, in Chelsea, would be a great match between the space itself and all the projectors. We offered invitations as a low-level reward on Kickstarter, so there are many hundreds of people who are already "on the list."

If anyone has ideas + advice for venues (and not just for the premier), we'd be psyched to hear them. Email us at girlwalk@gmail.com.

What's next? More videos? Dancing around the world? I've got a bunch of ideas marinating for future projects, and would love to pursue this concept in other places. The Kickstarter fundraising was most amazing in that it gave me the confidence to devote myself 100% to Girl Walk. For now, I want to try and show the film as widely as possible, and create really solid viewing experiences for people. Figuring out how to afford this, I suspect, will also take a good amount of time + craftiness.

Do you have any interesting stories from while shooting around NYC? Nothing but interesting stories. We've had an ongoing relationship with the Staten Island Ferry that's been really interesting, since the test footage from January became so widely watched. We've made a bunch of repeat visits to film on both the ferry itself and in the terminal, and there's a lot of different power characters down there.

On the boat, all the police and ferry workers see Anne and the jacket, start chuckling, and make way for us to come through. In the terminal, a few of the security guards have softened a bit, too. Last month, we ran into a guy who sells helicopter tours just outside the ferry terminal—he's in the trailer, standing behind John outside the building. He had made a phone-video of us back in January and put it on YouTube; it had 6 hits.

When "the skeleton" is dancing in Central Park he seems to get a lot of attention, did it become difficult for the dancers to dance at any point? John (The Skeleton) and Alex (on of our camera-people) made that dance without telling anyone; everyone in the background is part of a larger scene we were filming in Central Park. It's great watching the three camera people go wild at the dancing spectacle before them....

I'm constantly astonished by our dancers ability to see through the swirl of the crowd, and find a line through space.

Our experience dancing in public has been surprising mostly for how strongly we've been ignored. We've made scenes in Grand Central at rush hour and in the perfume section at Bloomingdale's, and have been pretty well ignored. After a third take in the midtown Apple store, a manager gracefully came up and asked us to be on our way.

Was there anywhere you wished you could have shot, but weren't able to? A bunch of locations remain on our 'holy grail' list -- some for their symbolic value, and others we just wish we'd had different experiences at. More time at Yankees Stadium would've been great. The New York Public Library would've been great. Wollman's Rink in Central Park just got turned into a theme park.

Shooting in stores has been really difficult to get permission for, and although we're not afraid of renegade maneuvers, it's helpful not to get busted immediately. I suppose most of all, there's just a limit to how many scenes we can include, and there's definitely enough New York environments that interest me to fill another film with.

At Yankee Stadium (Photo by Jacob Krupnick)

You'll be at the Kickstarter Film Festival this weekend—any thoughts about Kickstarter, or tips on other people thinking about starting a campaign on it (it seemed to be hugely successful for you guys)? Wow—Kickstarter has changed my life, and I admire their mission to no end. The platform made it easy for people to connect with us and easy to transmit the project to people around them. For us, it was a real triumph. I stopped seeking freelance work and concentrated on this project that's been far more consuming than I could've possible imagined.

My sense is that just about everyone who knows of Kickstarter has a project they're cooking up themselves. I think this creates a logical problem for the platform becoming a a field of inspiring ideas that's just too grand to navigate. My advice for anyone launching a project is to spend a lot of time focusing on the clear communication of their idea. Engage in some ruthless personal critique, and share the pitch video with people who haven't heard you wax passionately over dinners + drinks. See if your two- or three-minute video amps them up and compels them to join your team -- and if it does, you have a winner.

How many previously non-dancers on the crew have become dancers? I'm more interested in the way dance is an expression of an ecstatic, ineffable feeling than I am in the perfect expression of movements by trained dancers. I hope that Girl Walk inspires people to move with less self-consciousness and more freedom.

I think all of us dance more, and more freely than we used. I'm probably the emblem for this; I've been to a bunch of weddings and parties this year, and am proud to find myself first to gravitate toward the dance floor.