Trendsurfing: Video mash-ups (The Times)
By David Rowan
Steven Spielberg somehow forgot to include Eminem in his Indiana Jones movies. Nor did Judy Garland ever get around to rapping with Q-Tip in The Wizard of Oz. Thankfully, Jonny Wilson is around today to correct Hollywood's greatest oversights. Crouching intensely over a PC in his bedroom in Hendon, north London, the 24-year-old self-confessed geek is busy remixing films the way he wants them, for distribution on DVDs or over the net. The studios might not appreciate Wilson's blatant breach of their copyright - but, as he explains matter-of-factly between mouse-clicks, "they can't do anything about it".
This is the latest digital menace troubling film-industry lawyers, and it's called the video mash-up. In a thousand bedrooms like Wilson's, amateur bootleggers are cutting and splicing movies, TV clips and music videos to create an underground art form that's fast winning a mainstream audience. To join them, all you need is a computer, some easily pirated editing software, and a decent sense of rhythm. And if word spreads that you have talent, your audiovisual remixes might even earn you some cash.
It's worked for Jonny Wilson, who has given up his day job editing TV documentaries to be a dance-club "video DJ". Three years ago, Wilson and two friends began mixing (or "mashing") up video clips with danceable tunes and posting the results online. They would splice Bing Crosby in White Christmas with an episode of The Tweenies, re-cut a Kill Bill fight scene as a rhythmic dance track, even turn a Tony Blair TUC speech into a rap. The three men, calling themselves Eclectic Method, then started remixing footage live in clubs, their laptops connected to projectors. So far this year they have played 88 clubs in 13 countries, their mash-ups also featuring on MTV and at the Sundance Film Festival.
"At Sundance, our live movie remix show took in kung fu films, Charade, Pulp Fiction, The Terminator and The Muppets," Wilson explains. "What we really like is finding the recurring rhythms in films, like the sword fights, that we can put to a beat."
Until recently, mash-ups were all about music. Video remixes were just too complicated for the available technology, but anyone could sample, scratch, cut and cross-fade MP3 audio files. The results were sometimes surreal, but often very danceable - Madonna's Ray of Light blended with The Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant, or Christina Aguilera's Genie In A Bottle mixed with The Strokes' Hard to Explain. But suddenly now, video is becoming easier and cheaper to remix, thanks to new DVD players and software such as VJamm. This lets Wilson program his laptop so that each keystroke controls a different video feed. All he needs for a two-hour show is his laptop and a small customised video mixer.
But it's not just clubbers who are enjoying the latest video mash-ups. Some of the year's biggest hits have built audiences online - including a satirical remix of The Passion of the Christ, called The Mashin' of the Christ, which samples films ranging from A Clockwork Orange to Jesus Christ Superstar. The genre's popularity, reckons Wilson, stems from the limited demand it makes on concentration. "Young people get bored quickly," he explains. "They need fast entertainment to catch their short attention span."
But isn't he just stealing other people's creative property? "I'd say we're promoting the artist's music or film, and if anything we'll increase their incomes," he says. Besides, last month he spent £600 on DVDs for unauthorised sampling. "So you could say," he grins, "that we're a major supporter of the movie industry..."
(The Times, London, October 11 2004)
Steven Spielberg somehow forgot to include Eminem in his Indiana Jones movies. Nor did Judy Garland ever get around to rapping with Q-Tip in The Wizard of Oz. Thankfully, Jonny Wilson is around today to correct Hollywood's greatest oversights. Crouching intensely over a PC in his bedroom in Hendon, north London, the 24-year-old self-confessed geek is busy remixing films the way he wants them, for distribution on DVDs or over the net. The studios might not appreciate Wilson's blatant breach of their copyright - but, as he explains matter-of-factly between mouse-clicks, "they can't do anything about it".
This is the latest digital menace troubling film-industry lawyers, and it's called the video mash-up. In a thousand bedrooms like Wilson's, amateur bootleggers are cutting and splicing movies, TV clips and music videos to create an underground art form that's fast winning a mainstream audience. To join them, all you need is a computer, some easily pirated editing software, and a decent sense of rhythm. And if word spreads that you have talent, your audiovisual remixes might even earn you some cash.
It's worked for Jonny Wilson, who has given up his day job editing TV documentaries to be a dance-club "video DJ". Three years ago, Wilson and two friends began mixing (or "mashing") up video clips with danceable tunes and posting the results online. They would splice Bing Crosby in White Christmas with an episode of The Tweenies, re-cut a Kill Bill fight scene as a rhythmic dance track, even turn a Tony Blair TUC speech into a rap. The three men, calling themselves Eclectic Method, then started remixing footage live in clubs, their laptops connected to projectors. So far this year they have played 88 clubs in 13 countries, their mash-ups also featuring on MTV and at the Sundance Film Festival.
"At Sundance, our live movie remix show took in kung fu films, Charade, Pulp Fiction, The Terminator and The Muppets," Wilson explains. "What we really like is finding the recurring rhythms in films, like the sword fights, that we can put to a beat."
Until recently, mash-ups were all about music. Video remixes were just too complicated for the available technology, but anyone could sample, scratch, cut and cross-fade MP3 audio files. The results were sometimes surreal, but often very danceable - Madonna's Ray of Light blended with The Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant, or Christina Aguilera's Genie In A Bottle mixed with The Strokes' Hard to Explain. But suddenly now, video is becoming easier and cheaper to remix, thanks to new DVD players and software such as VJamm. This lets Wilson program his laptop so that each keystroke controls a different video feed. All he needs for a two-hour show is his laptop and a small customised video mixer.
But it's not just clubbers who are enjoying the latest video mash-ups. Some of the year's biggest hits have built audiences online - including a satirical remix of The Passion of the Christ, called The Mashin' of the Christ, which samples films ranging from A Clockwork Orange to Jesus Christ Superstar. The genre's popularity, reckons Wilson, stems from the limited demand it makes on concentration. "Young people get bored quickly," he explains. "They need fast entertainment to catch their short attention span."
But isn't he just stealing other people's creative property? "I'd say we're promoting the artist's music or film, and if anything we'll increase their incomes," he says. Besides, last month he spent £600 on DVDs for unauthorised sampling. "So you could say," he grins, "that we're a major supporter of the movie industry..."
(The Times, London, October 11 2004)
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