Context
-still from Soft Palate by Martin Arnold
Similar to writing a paper, starting your media project by doing research on the work that is already out there can help bring inspiration to your project while also asking you to consider how your work fits into the media landscape and what is distinct about your particular perspective on the topic. Below are some films and texts that can help set the stage for thinking about what editing strategies you wish you use to critically engage with your media clip.
Relevant Resources
Films that use remix strategies
- Carcel - José Luis Martinat
Parte de la serie Nosotros/Ellos en la que el autor se apropia de reconocidas series animadas. Elimina de ellas los personajes, reemplaza la banda sonora por un sonido minimalista y nos deja con lo restante. Este trabajo normalmente se presenta en formato de instalación./
Part of the series Us / Them in which the author appropriates from recognized animated series. He removes the characters from them, replaces the soundtrack with a minimalist sound and leave us with the rest. This work is usually presented in installation format. - Love is the Message, The Message is Death - Arthur Jafa
Content Warning: This piece contains video of police brutality.
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"Set to the searing highs and lows of Kanye West’s gospel-inspired hip-hop track, “Ultralight Beam,” Love Is The Message is a masterful convergence of found footage that traces African-American identity through a vast spectrum of contemporary imagery. From photographs of civil rights leaders watermarked with “Getty Images” to helicopter views of the LA Riots to a wave of bodies dancing to “The Dougie,” the meticulously edited 7-minute video suspends viewers in a swelling, emotional montage that is a testament to Jafa’s profound ability to mine, scrutinize, and reclaim media’s representational modes and strategies." - MOCA - David Claerbout, The Pure Necessity
Rather than repeating the story of a little boy abandoned in the middle of a jungle, far from civilisation, David Claerbout's take on the animated movie classic from 1967 turns the sentimental and comic story about dancing, singing, and trumpet-playing jungle animals into a film that dispenses with the 'humanization' of animals, and even with the 'man-cub'. The animals behave instead in a manner befitting their species. Balloo, Bagheera and Kaa, whose songs and slapstick acts have been delighting children and adults alike for decades, are now back to being bear, panther and python.
History Lessons by Call Number: Tisch Library DVD Collections HQ75.5 .H58 2000Publication Date: 2000In this wonderfully irreverent yet empowering film, Barbara Hammer traces lesbian history by presenting an extraordinary array of archival footage – and then playfully manipulates it to make it seem as though lesbians were everywhere. From popular films to newsreels, sex ed pics, stag reels, medical and educational films, old nudies and more, History Lessons reclaims and rewrites lesbian history.
Tribulation 99 : alien anomalies under America by Call Number: SMFA DVD Collection DVD-96 TRIPublication Date: 2006Every disaster, man-made or natural, every assassination, and every period of political turmoil, past, present and future, is attributed to the work of aliens living beneath the earth's crust.
- Martin Arnold - Passsage À L'Acte 1993
Content Warning: This video has rapid edits and may potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.
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"...The short, pulsating sequence at the family table shows, in its original state, a classic, deceptive harmony. Arnold deconstructs this scenario of normality by destroying its original continuity. It catches on the tinny sounds and bizarre body movements of the subjects, which, in reaction, become snagged on the continuity. The message, which lies deep under the surface of the family idyll, suppressed or lost, is exposed – that message is war." - Filmmakers Coop - VOX - Color film was built for white people. Here's what it did to dark skin.
This is an example of a different approach to creating a story through found media.
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For decades, the color film available to consumers was built for white people. The chemicals coating the film simply weren't adequate to capture a diversity of darker skin tones. And the photo labs established in the 1940s and 50s even used an image of a white woman, called a Shirley card, to calibrate the colors for printing.
Books
Recycled images : the art and politics of found footage films by Call Number: SMFA Library Stacks PN1995.9 .E96 W45 1993Publication Date: 1993Includes condensed commentary from author's 1991 informal interviews with North American filmmakers who have made extensive use of found footage: Craig Baldwin, Abigail Child, Bruce Conner, David Rimmer, Keith Sanborn, Chick Strand, and Leslie Thornton.
Digital Griots by ISBN: 9780809390625Publication Date: 2011-03-16Scholar Adam J. Banks offers a mixtape of African American digital rhetoric in his innovative study Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age. Presenting the DJ as a quintessential example of the digital griot-high-tech storyteller-this book shows how African American storytelling traditions and their digital manifestations can help scholars and teachers shape composition studies, thoroughly linking oral, print, and digital production in ways that centralize African American discursive practices as part of a multicultural set of ideas and pedagogical commitments.
Animal Life and the Moving Image by Call Number: Tisch Library Book Stacks PN1995.9.A5 A556 2015ISBN: 9781844579006Publication Date: 2015-12-28From the proto-cinematic sequencing of animal motion in the nineteenth century to the ubiquity of animal videos online, the histories of animal life and the moving image are enigmatically interlocked. Animal Life and the Moving Image is the first collection of essays to offer a sustained focus on the relations between screen cultures and non-human animals.
The Animated Bestiary by Call Number: Tisch Library Book Stacks PN1995.9.A5 W45 2009ISBN: 9780813544144Publication Date: 2008-11-28Cartoonists and animators have given animals human characteristics for so long that audiences are now accustomed to seeing Bugs Bunny singing opera and Mickey Mouse walking his dog Pluto. The Animated Bestiary critically evaluates the depiction of animals in cartoons and animation more generally. Paul Wells argues that artists use animals to engage with issues that would be more difficult to address directly because of political, religious, or social taboos. Consequently, and principally through anthropomorphism, animation uses animals to play out a performance of gender, sex and sexuality, racial and national traits, and shifting identity, often challenging how we think about ourselves.
From Mouse to Mermaid by Call Number: Tisch Library Book Stacks PN1999.W27 F76 1995ISBN: 0585026882Publication Date: 1995-01-01From Mouse to Mermaid, an interdisciplinary collection of original essays, is the first comprehensive, critical treatment of Disney cinema. Addressing children s classics as well as the Disney affiliates more recent attempts to capture adult audiences, the contributors respond to the Disney film legacy from feminist, marxist, poststructuralist, and cultural studies perspectives.
Deconstructing Disney by Call Number: Tisch Library Book Stacks PN1999.W27 B97 1999ISBN: 9781849645294Publication Date: 2000-01-01A close critical look at the new Disney canon - using deconstruction as a critical lever to engage with the films themselves, and the wider issues they raise.
How to Read el Pato Pascual by Call Number: SMFA Library Stacks N6502.5 H6 2017ISBN: 9781911164722Publication Date: 2018-08-07With text in both English and Spanish Drawing upon the reach of one of the world's largest production companies, How to Read El Pato Pascual explores the prevalent presence of the Walt Disney Company within Latin America.
The Mouse That Roared by Call Number: Tisch Library Book Stacks PN1999.W27 G57 1999ISBN: 0847691098Publication Date: 1999-04-22Today, cultural practices and institutions shape nearly every aspect of our lives. Giroux takes up this issue by looking at the world's most influential corporation. He explores the diverse ways in which the Disney Corporation has become a political force in shaping images of public memory, producing children as consuming subjects, and legitimating ideological positions that constitute a deeply conservative and disturbing view of the roles imparted to children and adults alike.
Glitch Feminism by ISBN: 9781786632692Publication Date: 2020The divide between the digital and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time. How do we find out who we are within this digital era' Where do we create the space to explore our identity' How can we come together and create solidarity' The glitch is often dismissed as an error, a faulty overlaying, but, as Legacy Russell shows, liberation can be found within the fissures between gender, technology and the body that it creates.
Videos about editing and remix
- Everythyng is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson on Youtube (Part 1)
Created entirely by Kirby Ferguson, Everything is a Remix explores many of the pop culture elements we love so much and explains their origins. - FROZEN BUT IN 7 DIFFERENT GENRES
From the EditingisEverything Youtube channel that re-edits films into genres.
"What if Frozen were a horror movie? Or a completely different romance story? Find out here!"