In May of this year, Stephen Torrence and cohorts wound up performing his sign language interpretation of the song “First of May” onstage with Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm. (It’s a song about springtime, and, in case you missed yesterday’s post and aren’t a JoCo fan, it’s not safe for work.) Stephen describes the performance as “one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had.”

Stephen didn’t start out making videos with the idea of becoming e-famous, though. His first ASL video, for “Still Alive,” was the result of a project for an ASL class at Texas Tech. He decided to put the song on YouTube and, in his words, “It snowballed from there.”

When I got in touch with Stephen, he suggested a video interview, since sign language is such a visual medium. I recorded the interview using iChat and a MacBook Pro, and our intrepid video team has scissored out the best parts into two videos. I’ve put them up here, along with a transcript (which includes one bonus question), in case you’d rather read. (Apologies for the moment where I’m so cleverly covering up the signs — iChat’s picture-in-picture blocked a couple of bits, and in any other position it would have blocked his other hand. Or his head.)

Tracy V. Wilson: Can you tell me what your process is for actually making one of the videos from start to finish?
Stephen Torrence: Start would be: I hear a song and it gets stuck in my head, and I sort of start playing around with it in my head, like, “Ooh, I think I know that these signs would work well here,” or “These signs would work well here,” or “Here’s an interesting character.” And I hit up Google, find the lyrics, put them in a Word document. Then I have Word open and a sign language translation site called ASL Pro, and any signs I don’t remember from my classes I will look up on there. And, like I said, just go line by line, listen to the music over and over again, get a feel for how the line works, maybe how the line works in relation to other lines, and slowly but surely write down the signs that I’ll use under each line of lyrics. Once the gloss [Note: That's the breakdown of which signs will go with which parts of the song] is complete, I set up sort of a hodgepodge lighting array using lamps from my room and other various lighting apparati, and I use a camera. I have a Fuji S-6000, which has done very well for video recording. I’ll set that up on a tripod, get the lighting all ready to go, and then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. It usually takes me about 10 or 15 rehearsals before I get a good feel for the song and memorize not only the lyrics but the signs I’m going to do and the actions I’m going to do. Inevitably, what will happen during that process is I’ll figure out things that I didn’t realize when I was glossing out the song. For instance, in one of my more recent videos, Jonathan Coulton’s “Space Doggity,” it made sense at a certain point to kind of act like I was floating around through the frame during some of the lyrics. And that was something that I did not realize until I got to the recording stage. So once I get a good recording that I like, I’ll upload the video to the computer, and I’ll just use iMovie to synchronize, to take out the audio that was playing in the background and to insert the actual song file over the video. Synchronizing sometimes takes a little bit of time, especially with iMovie ’09, but once I’ve got it all together I upload it to YouTube and share it with the world.

Your videos are done in one take, so how many times does it take to record one?
Like I said, about 10 or 15, for the average one. Miley Cyrus’s “Seven Things” took me on the order of 30 takes. That was a very long evening.

I think that’s one video of yours I haven’t watched. [Note: I have now!] So what about that song would take so much?
It’s very fast. [sings] “The seven things I hate about you – ” It’s an extremely fast lyric, not really a way that I can translate it with fewer signs, so I had to sign [signs] seven reasons why I hate you, for that line, and doing it fast, remembering each one of the signs, and then doing it consistently through the song, because the chorus comes again and again and again. It took me a lot of practice to get a take, and there are a lot of elements that have to go right. If I get all the signs correct, that’s only one part of it. I’ve got to get facial expressions correct, I have to get body motions correct, emotion has to be right at every point in the song. And for all of that to come together takes a lot of practice.

So, with that in mind, of all the videos you’ve done so far, that are up on YouTube, do you have a favorite?
My favorite is one that’s not terribly popular, but I really enjoyed doing “The Future Soon.” It was one of the first Jonathan Coulton songs that I really fell in love with, and I think it was my third or fourth video. I just feel like the story is pure Jonathan Coulton, and the interpretation does retain the idea of the robot wars, as this kind of lonely guy wanting to impress the girl but taking over the world and destroying it in the process. It’s classic Coulton, and I really like it.

Do you have any hints on which songs will come next?
“Me Make Fire” [by Paul and Storm] is a likely one, but I will say that I do have glosses complete for other Jonathan Coulton songs. “Big Bad World One,” I’ll definitely do “Chiron Beta Prime” this Christmas, so be on the lookout for that. The rest, I can’t say when they’re going to come or which order, but there will be more very soon.

I want to see “Mandelbrot Set,” because I want to see what the equation parts look like.
Yes, that I actually have considered. For the part where he goes, “Take a point called Z in the complex plane,” what I’ll probably do is [signs] first Z, and then “complex” I’ll have to look up. But then [signs] Z2 is Z1 squared plus Z. I have mulled around in my head how it’s going to work, but that is going to be a hard one. And one of the parts of it is I might have to come up with a sign name for Benoit Mandelbrot, which I’m not terribly good at, but it’ll probably involve something, a variation of [signs] the sign for “math.” So perhaps M and B for Mandelbrot. That’s coming. Down the road. I’ll do “I Feel Fantastic” before I do “Mandelbrot Set,” let’s put it that way.

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(Yes, my last question was really more like a request.)

ASL videos aren’t Stephen’s only creative project. In collaboration with some other Texas Tech students, he produces a podcast called Bad Philosophy, and his YouTube channel includes several other videos, musical and non. (Including that bawdy one we keep talking about.)

If you like Stephen’s videos, he suggests looking for ASL versions of other songs you like. And if you’re interested in learning sign language, deaf chats and Web sites like asluniversity.com, he says, are great resources for learning. And if you missed part one of the interview, you can read it in yesterday’s post.

I’d like to interview more cool folks for FanStuff. Have suggestions? Stick ‘em in the comments.

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