If you haven't already seen Whiplash, sort your life and watch it. Also because none of this will make any sense.
A key scene towards the start of the film sees JK Simmons' maniacal college professor hurl a cymbal at Miles Teller's head, after which he questions him as to whether he was rushing or dragging the drumbeats.
It's an incredibly tense scene and forms the basis of the film and the abusive relationship between Simmons and Teller. However, when we're all so caught up in the drama of it all, nobody actually figured out whether or not JK Simmons' character was actually right.
Never fear. The Internet (and Reddit) is here. djsunkid, who admitted to NEVER SEEING THE FILM IN FULL, took time out of his / her life to critically analyse the scene using science and perseverance to see if Teller was dragging.
Here's his analysis in full:
I chopped the audio into different takes in Ableton and lined them up to see just how much difference there was between each take:
The easiest hit to see is the second kick and snare hit so to get meaningful numbers, I've measured each of the takes from that point. There are 8 takes, and the tempo differences between each of them is is imperceivable to begin with, the differences are only a matter of a few milliseconds. The first four takes have that snare land within 24 milliseconds of each other. According to Fletcher none of those takes were "quite his tempo"
In this picture, I've arranged each of the takes according to when that hit occurred, with the most rushed at the top and the most dragging at the bottom. Each of the takes is within 100 milliseconds of the other. The slowest that he drags was in the 9th take, which is 106ms slower than the fastest he rushes which was in the 5th take.
I'm not sure of the exact tempo of each of these takes, but to give a sense of the small amount of difference in each of the takes, I've arbitrarily assigned the fastest take a tempo of 95BPM, so that I can illustrate how small the difference between each of the takes actually was.
If the fifth take (rushing) was at 95BPM, then here are the tempos of each of the other takes, along with the comment that Fletcher offers:
5th take = 0ms = 95.00 BPM (you're rushing)
8th take = 18ms = 93.59 BPM (dragging)
2nd take = 44ms = 91.65 BPM (downbeat on 18)
1st take = 56ms = 90.78 BPM (not quite my tempo)
4th take = 61ms = 90.34 BPM (not quite my tempo, it's all good no worries)
7th take = 63ms = 90.23 BPM (rushing)
3rd take = 76ms = 89.31 BPM (bar 17, the "and" of 4)
6th take = 83ms = 88.84 BPM (dragging, just a hair)
9th take = 106ms = 87.67 BPM (hurls a chair at him)
The damning thing is that the 7th take he is accused of rushing, even though it is slower than the 8th take which is supposedly rushing. But the truth is, even switching between the different take with them on loop, it is very difficult to tell them apart. In conclusion, no, Fletcher wasn't being accurate. He definitely was just being an asshole to Andrew. I haven't actually watched the movie, but my analysis shows that he is a big fat jerk.
And there you have it. Solid, scientific proof that JK Simmons' character was just an asshole in Whiplash. Not that any of us needed convincing, but it's pretty cool to see this kind of thing mapped out for all to see.
Now use computer analysis to figure out what Bill Murray said to Scarlett Johansson at the end of Lost In Translation.
Via reddit.com
