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)

Apps are evil?

So I was tasked with making a short video using my phone and apps I could find in my case on the Apple app store.

Before I post the video I made, I think its important to note how few useful ones I could find. Furthermore there seems to be a big trend of the few usable apps tempting you with previews only to throw a big price sticker in your face the second you try to save them.

If I can’t even save it then its not a free app. Its like advertising free food but then saying that is actually to only look at the food through the glass, eating it costs extra….So its not free is my point, rant over.  Here’s a small selection of the apps I’ve downloaded and deleted day in and day out.

Without further ado here is the final product a Video created with an iphone

Small side note most the apps I found over compressed the footage and in one apps case whenever the footage left the phone it would be flipped and mirrored. Couldn’t find out why.

This video was made using my Iphone camera and these apps for colour grading/effects that are seen throughout this piece.

The footage was then compiled on my computer using Adobe Premiere to add the music and edit the takes down.Although this could of been done on any editing software.

 

#CMPSalford
Joshua Baker, PSVT Year 2, Creative Media Production
Assignment 1 (Individual), “Hardly Doing Nothing” Short Film (shot on Iphone 7 plus)

 

‘Put it in Reverse’

A one-minute film shot, processed and edited entirely on an iPhone 5c.

As you might have guessed by now, each of the barrel scrapers were tasked to produce a short mobile film for a CMP assignment. Rather than rigid production values however, the focus of this project was on creativity and to explore the possibilities of mobile video.

A big part of the project was finding a video-based app to make the film more than a shaky mobile video.

Initially I struggled to find an appropriate app. I found Funimate, a social media app with lots of built in animations and effects for videos. This opened the door to a variety of ideas and directions I could take my project in. However, I found Funimate’s effects to be too quick and simple to produce a minute of meaningful content.

Finding the right app.

After my research into apps, I finally decided to settle on something relatively simple. Reverse Vid does what it says on the can. It also had settings to alter the speed of the video. I experimented with these settings but found them too unnatural and choppy, so opted for simple reverse effects. Reverse Vid gave me inspiration to create a film that features some everyday activities set backwards; and sometimes performed in reverse so they appear (not-so) normal. Fellow Barrelscraper, Marcus, was happy to help in the acting department.

Adding a Twist.

During my research, I came along an Action Movie Fx app. It would take simple footage and superimpose huge movie-style explosions onto it. Initially I dismissed this as too gimmick-y for a one minute film, but after Reverse Vid I revisited the idea. Combining the two apps, I had the idea of my film’s character reversing the effects of one of the disastrous explosions. This added a new element of originality to the film that I had been looking for, and more importantly – gave the film it’s punchline.

‘Put it in Reverse’ was the embarrassing result of this unholy communion of apps. Enjoy.

– Bryn.

Gully Puzzles

For my 1 minute video assignment I decided to do something with reverse video using an Iphone 6. My intention was to create an amusing little video about puzzles. I realised instantly that trying to think about how things work in reverse is head boggling. So i decided to do a couple of practice runs to get walking backwards down, and also to just get me head round whats going to happen when reversed. To achieve the video effects I used, I utilised the aptly titled reverse vid to achieve the backwards effects. The rest of the video was edited in the Imovie app which comes free with the Iphone 6.

As you can see my walking is flawless! No one could believe I am walking backwards!

After all this I came up with the concept of DnB puzzles as it amused me. Luckily for me I have nieces and nephews who own lego and puzzles, They arent mine HONESTLY!

Unfortunately for the first take of the jigsaw scene I only took a photograph not a BLINKING video so had to spend even more time making the jigsaw again. The main time consumer was jigsaw creation anyway never mind twice hahaha.

So after all that Gully Puzzles was born. ENJOY!

Love Hurts

a Short Film captured entirely on the LG G5

Assignment 1 tasked me with creating a 1 minute mobile video utilising one or more video apps. The video could be based on anything using any format I wanted, so long as I was limited to my smartphone being the only capture device.

My first concept was to create a hyperlapse/montage. Using my phone suction mount in my car (usually used for Google Maps) I’d record my daily commute with a first person perspective to and from where I work part-time around Uni.

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While filming, I decided the project was a bit bland and that I could do better. My second idea was to recreate something I’d done before, keeping the POV theme. I decided to mount a smartphone to a cap allowing me to head mount my phone, creating a Real Life First Person Shooter video, mimicking the FPS video game genre.

 

Above is my original attempt back in 2012. It went well (if you ignore the weird compression artifacts) but 5 years on I feel I can do a lot better. Me and my budding actor friend David planned to film a Campaign Mission from a FPS video game, where the POV character (me) would recover important data from a crashed drone, captured by the enemy (David). Annoyingly, upon arriving at the scene with everything ready, the heavens opened.

Back in the house, we decided to have a rethink, shooting something entirely inside that wasn’t necessarily in first person. While racking our heads for ideas, David suggested we reenact a written joke from the internet. We found a joke, and got to work!

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Having not planned to film inside, we didn’t have a tripod with us. We decided to fashion one by taping together long objects and piling chairs on one another. It seemed to work ok.

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“The PowerDirector Bundle Version” Android app allowed me to try colour grading, before uploading what we shot to my PC where I’d then edit and render. The use of colour grading gives my mobile video gives it that “filming” look, you sometimes forget this was even filmed on a phone!

 

#CMPSalford
Marcus Brooks, PSVT Year 2, Creative Media Production
Assignment 1 (Individual), “Love Hurts” Short Film (shot on LG G5)

Ideas

I often spend a long time coming and working on ideas that never see the light of day.So to prove I not only do work but to inflate my ego, here is a screenshot of a working progress logo design (it has been organised to have semblance of order).

-Josh

Welcome to the bottom of the barrel

This is the first post on our blog. What’s up.