Shooting Star Wars

A very, very dumb remix by Bryn Williams

For my second Creative Media Production assignment I was tasked with creating a remix artefact video like the hundreds that are already made every week through social media. These could range from supercuts celebrating film and television, or participatory trends from meme culture.

It took me a while to decide what kind of remix I was going to make. For inspiration, I looked to the work of CLS Videos on YouTube. They create film-based supercuts highlighting the best of a particular trope or narrative.

I found these supercuts charming and more likely to stand the test of time than any meme or trend video. However, I was keen to catch lightning in a bottle while I still could by participating in a current meme. I began to look at more recent trends.

Finding the right meme

I didn’t have to look far to find a variety of recent trends in meme culture, but picking the right one was more challenging than expected. Many memes will be image based and so unsuitable for this assignment, and others were too simple for my preference. I wanted to showcase some more advanced editing technique than just cutting between footage.

Enter ‘shooting stars’. This meme has only been trending for the last month, but it’s spread quickly. All versions of the meme will involve a roto-scoped image of a person or character floating across different footage (usually space-themed), to the soundtrack of Shooting Stars by the Bag Raiders. I picked this for my own remix because I thought it was funny, catchy and also used some clever editing in After Effects.

The Shia Labeouf Just Do It meme from 2015 is a meme which used similar effects; overlaying rotoscoped or chroma keyed footage on top of another source. I enjoyed this method because it invites creativity as well as participation. Shooting Stars was just the most recent, with a catchy song to make it memorable.

As for source material, I needed to find something that would appeal. Other than making an amusing pun, the Star Wars movies are not new to remix culture. More recently, Star Wars prequels in particular have been captured by memes.

Remixing the Remix

Creating the remix involved using both Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. The compatibility of these two programs allowed me to edit with ease. The tools I used most were the rotoscoping brush (to crop the footage of the character), and keyframing (to move, scale and rotate him). After Effects was preferable over Premiere for this task because of its movement curves, allowing for more complicated key-framing. Some light colour-correction was also used to match the two sources if necessary.

I found editing this remix initially challenging but once I had done one segment, the rest were relatively simple. It was more enjoyable however, to try something more advanced than just cutting between two sources.

Finishing Up

After the remix was complete, I showed it to a variety of different people to gauge how it would be received. Unsurprisingly the most receptive audience were fans of Star Wars but I also found non-fans were amused by the silly humour and catchy song. One viewer suggested that I make the remix longer and add even more sources.

I was very happy with the reception my remix had because, despite its simple nature, it managed to make people laugh. I’d definitely make something similar if another trend like ‘Shooting Stars’ comes along.

References:
Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, LucasArts/Disney, 2005.
Star Wars IV : A New Hope, LucasArts/Disney, 1977.
Star Wars I: Phantom Menace, LucasArts/Disney, 1999.
Star Wars V: Empire Strikes Back, LucasArts/Disney, 1980.
Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi, LucasArts/Disney, 1983.
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, New Line Cinema, 2003.
Shooting Stars, Bag Raiders, Modular Recordings, 2009.

Boys From The Dwarf Remix Mashup Cut

For my remix video I decided I wanted to do a music video remix of one of my favourite tv programs Red Dwarf. The inspiration for this came from watching similar videos on youtube like this.

And this

I Couldnt decide at first what type of video i wanted to do and was toying with the idea of a dance scene supercut from movies but after very short search I found that this had been done already quite comprehensively.

But not to be deterred I knew that there would be something out there to use and just by chance one night whilst watching Red Dwarf the Tongue Tied music video came on, Which in turn reminded me of the Cat and his moves.

After this it was a short search through the series to find the cat doing his moves and a remix video was born. All was not completely smooth sailing though as finding the right music and making the dance go together was more difficult than first anticipated, In the end there where four videos all with different styles of music.

The first two just didnt sit right for me.

Mr Benn – Wine Down Low

Levelz – Rowdy Badd

My partner Then suggested some Paul Simon and being a fan of Graceland I tried one of my favourite tracks from the album Call Me Al. I even got so far as to make a whole video for this track and was nearly ready to submit.

Then Just Listening to some music by chance I just knew it would fit better after watching the clips over and over again for so long even without the video I just knew it would work.

For all editing done during my work I used the free software Imovie, Utilising quick cuts so as to stay with the music and adding my title and end screens.

For editing the audio I used the free software Audacity. Used to chop the original song into just the bits i wanted and make it fit around the video, as the audio editor in Imovie is very clunky.

So through ALOT of trial and error I completed my video and would feel more confident in future where I to be required to do so.

Clips used where:

Red Dwarf s01 e01 – 1988 – BBC

red Dwarf s01 e02 – 1988 – BBC

Red Dwarf s01 e03  – 1988 – BBC

Red Dwarf s02 e01 – 1988 – BBC

Red Dwarf s08 e01 – 1999 – BBC

Smokey Bandits – smoke from the attic (dirty dubsters remix)

Thank you

Dualta Brennan

Creative Media Production Assignent 2

University of Salford

An old joy brought back with supercuts

Since I was a kid I have enjoyed action /martial arts films, and would constantly jump around trying to imitate the moves. This coupled with a recent task of trying to pin the emotional/physiology response of videos left me wondering what I enjoyed so much about them and why I continued to watch the same films repeatedly.

After much ‘research’ re-watching old movie favourites, and finding such great time wasting actives as watching“Let’s Go Home” Supercut (https://vimeo.com/207814052) a video of every “Let’s go home”quote and the entire Burger Fiction youtube channel

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXZQA0vdUY4ZRzEZ5TFKdNA/videos)

which contains many supercuts and remixes. I found that a big focus on good nostalgia induced clips and editing were what drew viewers in ,leaving them and in this case me, watching till the end.

With this knowledge and idea I set out with creating a supercut of my own, that captured the giddy feeling I felt knowing a big fight or duel was about to happen in a film.

Because of my research my main  focus was on creating a flow with my edit and clip choices. The whole piece needed to feel reminiscent of the film scenes I was inspired by. Which I often found to have 3 stages; 1 a setup involving either characters and or set, 2 a character moment of tension often the eyes or showing them in a fighting position and 3 a big explosive move.Although not all films will follow this religiously I generally found these traits to be present through a lot of films.The screenshots below from the Matrix illustrate this well.

So for this PSVT assignment I’ve tried to tease that same emotional response of anticipation and tension I felt watching these films build up to their fight scenes, however with the added difficulty of stringing them together in a supercut to last for as long as possible, whilst still being appealing and conforming to the stages previously mentioned.

This was done by editing in time with action on screen and or the beat of the song. Footage was edited with a quick clean cuts in mind as to not slow the pace while also having spread sound from the original clips duck in and out as this also contributed to the pace and helped to clean up any unwanted original movie scores.

Without further ado here is the finished video, and my submission for the PSVT CMP Remix /Supercut Assignment:

A side note-

I could also talk about the long process of sourcing all these clips and choosing between all the different films.However I feel that would lead to a more nerdy rant then usual so I will leave that for another post on another day.

 

Footage in order of appearance-

Films-

Hero.(2002).Zhang Yimou.
Sherlock Holmes. (2009). Guy Ritchie.
Kill Bill Vol.1.(2003). Quentin Tarantino
Zack Snyder. 300.(2006).
Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back.(1980 ).Irvin Kershner.
Fist of Fury.(1972).Lo Wei .
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.(2000).Ang Lee.
Fist of Legend.(1994 ).Gordon Chan.
V for Vendetta.(2005 ).James McTeigue .
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.(2004 ).Rawson Marshall Thurber.
The Good The Bad The Ugly.(1966 ).Sergio Leone.
Rocky III. (1982 ).Sylvester Stallone.
Karate Kid Part II.(1986 ).John G. Avildsen .
Fight Club.(1999 ).David Fincher .
Back to the Future Part III.(1990 ).Robert Zemeckis.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. (2003 ).Peter Jackson.
Kingsman: The Secret Service.(2014 ).Matthew Vaughn .
Raiders of the Lost Ark.(1981 ).Steven Spielberg.

Song-

Intro by The XX (2009)

#CMPSalford
Joshua Baker, PSVT Year 2, Creative Media Production
Assignment 2 (Individual), Clash of Anticipation Supercut

 

Meme Culture (a Pop Culture Mashup… mashup)

Above is the inspiration for this project. Madeon is a French electronic music producer and someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time, having seem him live twice performing his debut album Adventure and his recent single in collaboration with Porter Robinson. His mashup track “Pop Culture” is one of his earliest works and what he is most famed for, where he remixes 39 songs live using a Novation Launchpad.

I do not own a Novation Launchpad and prefer to work with video anyway. While racking ideas and yoyo-ing concepts with my friend Phil, he came up with the idea of mashing up a series of memes and internet videos to the beat of Madeon’s Pop Culture. Being the fan of Madeon that I am, I’m surprised I didn’t think of this sooner.

For this project, I decided not to remix visuals for the entirety of Madeon’s track, instead working with no more than half of the song. Keeping the video short I felt would help the joke to stay strong and fresh. The original remix being built of short clips from various songs, there’s a strong “glitch-hop” feel to the track, where vocals are mashed to create new sounds. I decided to try to pair these sounds with clips from memes and internet videos that I felt closely matched the original track.

Myself and Phil listened to the track, racking our brains trying to make the sounds match with what we’ve remembered watching over the years. Once we had a good foundation, I was left to think of more sources, focussing on the edit.

For editing, all that was required was simple cutting, time stretching and some basic chroma keying of greenscreen artefacts, so I opted to use Sony Vegas. A program not so much used in industry, but heavily used in online media and meme culture. Plus other programs like Premiere and Media Composer seemed too advanced for the task at hand.

Looking at the image above, you can appreciate the level of detail there is in this project. This timeline only shows half of the full video, where in many cases audio has been separated from video to better fit the original soundtrack. Time stretching and pitch shifting of audio has also been used.

The above freeze frame combines two memes in one using chroma keying. The dog (Gabe) was an internet sensation through 2016 due to the sound of his barks and his adorableness. Sadly, Gabe has since died and his fanbase is in mourning. To honour Gabe, duding the “missing you” part of Madeon’s remix, it seemed fitting to blend the Shooting Stars meme and Gabe in astral form together, timing his barks (or borks as more widely referred to) with the beat of the track.

There is a lot that can be said about each edit decision and each reference made in this video, but given there are 25 sources of media (26 including the soundtrack, and 64 including all the original songs within Madeon’s mashup) I feel a full analysis would never do justice.

Here is the finished video, and my submission for the PSVT CMP Remix Assignment:

Referencing:

• Luukasd7 (2014). Meme – WoW (UAU) Chroma Key – Editions. YouTube
• Jamie IXI (2014). Gordon Ramsay Its Raw. YouTube
• MrBeemBom (2011). MrBeemBom. YouTube
• wirtzenator (2009). No… No No You Will Die!!!. YouTube
• Jimmy Here (2016). It Is Wednesday My Dudes Vine. YouTube
• Panax (2016). Idubbbz “I’m Gay”. YouTube
• Zanderich (2015). this guy moaned at least this loud. YouTube
• revergo (2012). Yee. YouTube
• Dedgy Blazer (2015). Van Damme Dank Greenscreen Footage. YouTube
• Kidrevolutionar .y (2015). Peanut Butter Baby. YouTube
• Owenergy Studios (2015). Owen Wilson Says WOW – (PART 1) – Complete. YouTube
• Pol (2016). gabe the dog green screen. YouTube
• deathtrips (2016). brand new 2016 dog source. YouTube
• wafflepwn (2009). Greatest freak out ever (ORIGINAL VIDEO). YouTube
• Creepypasta Archives (2015). filthy frank greenscreen shit (merry christmas). YouTube
• efan2011 (2011). The Room- You are tearing me apart- Full Scene. YouTube
• bob mcbob (2017). Wow Meme Original. YouTube
• Kids’ Poems and Stories With Michael Rosen (2008). Hot Food – Michael Rosen. YouTube
• BaconAkin (2017). Shooting Stars Template [background video + audio]. YouTube
• Bay Areaman (2014). COPS Reloaded – David “I Can Break These Cuffs” BEST VERSION FULL HD Little Person. YouTube
• Henry Edmonds (2012). Boots and Cats. YouTube
• bjarrett99 (2008). ShamWow (Full Length). YouTube
• The Eskimo (2016). iDubbbz – I Have Crippling Depression. YouTube
• Vishno Krishnarajah (2009). Crazy Frog Bros (Original). YouTube

#CMPSalford
Marcus Brooks, PSVT Year 2, Creative Media Production
Assignment 2 (Individual), Meme Culture (a Pop Culture Mashup… mashup)