Mashup Manifesto

Mash up film trailers creates great comic relief and the use of the footage when executed is enjoyable. I do feel classes such as NetWriting and other collaborations should be used under the fair use act if no one is trying to make a profit out of the creation or infringing on another person’s work of art. The mash up should not be used to infringe, bottom line. An artist, per se is creative to be original. I may have an original idea and if I use someone’s film clip to enhance my thought it is fair use. I should be allowed fair use of the original artists’ material if using someone’s sound track to convey another perspective for a class project. I am not trying to make a profit. I state the source  and I give full credit to the original artist, this is fair use.   I plan to use Lion King filming and mash up the Man of Steel trailer dialogue just to say “there is hope!”

The Lion King basically tells the story of a young lion “Simba” growing up as heir to the throne. The journey Simba embarks upon will teach courage, learning responsibility and adjusting to the adulthood duties of his father, the legendary King Mufasa. Simba does not have an easy journey. Simba must realize the importance of his role, his safety and the legacy he will have to honor and defend. Growing to become a leader is no easy task learning the “circle of life”! I think Disney does a great job with animation, the musical sound track and the characters to convey the mystical Pride Rock and the embarked upon journey for this lion cub. The Man of Steel parallels with the evolving character Simba, of the Lion King.  We find Clark Kent a young lad with powers beyond his own comprehension. He knows he is not from earth. His father warns him the world is not ready for him. The world will reject him and he tries to conceal his powers. He must use his powers or the earth could be destroyed. Another dilemma and contrast as Clark goes through his “circle of life” and defining moments to be all that he can be or let everyone perish. Clark must decide. I feel the use of the films and the editing various clips throughout my mash up will be fair use. I am not being creative as an artist I am a student using some ones original genre of film. I will match two pieces of work and create my perspective and alter the voices and music to convey my message of hope. I feel fair use is appropriate for in class activities and since I am not trying to make a profit, it is allowable. The money has been made off both films and I do not in any way feel my fair use in the mash ups will hinder any profits it only shows my creativity and my completion of a class assignment. I will make an attempt to match the two films with sound and try to convey there is hope is the circle of life! 

In order to be considered a creative work, video mashups must bring novel ideas from the creator of the video-mashup into view using material that is ideally cited and sourced to provide credit to the original authors of content.  It must be more than just visual clips accompanied by your favorite song; it can be said that the act of cutting, elongating, and replacing footage/music is now a creative process instead of a technical one.  One interesting question that arises from the early layering of already-created media is whether or not people considered the man who first layered Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" to The Wizard of Oz as a creator; probably not, however, I feel that this example is important when making the distinction of what constitutes creativity in the context of video/song mashups.  It is important to remember the types of insights that can be gained by casting a different light on material, and how easily accomplished this goal can be with today's technology.  

My contribution to the video-mashup project will be a combination of Inglourious Basterd's trailer soundtrack with the movie clips of Chicken Run.  These choices are important for a number of reasons that add to both the meaning and production value of the video.  Chicken Run features a protagonist that often has monologues spanning over a few seconds that feature repetitive movements on the part of the speaker.  This, combined with the numerous action scenes and surprisingly dark subject material make for a great trailer that envisions the characters possibly in a concentration camp during WWII.  Inglourious Basterds' trailer is great for multiple swells in music that coincide with the dialogue of a single speaker; if there were an easier way to go about this, I have not yet found it.  There also exists an opportunity to replicate Tarantino's unique directing style via quick-cutaways and short, powerful clips of often hard-to-stomach subject matter.  I will attempt to improve on my video transitioning skills and sound match-up for this video, as well as the contextual value of the clips that I choose.

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Finding Nemo and Zero Dark Thirty

The use of copyrighted material in this mashup is considered fair use since it is for educational purposes and is not designed to make a profit. Small excerpts of films will be used to create a satire of Finding Nemo for the purpose of raising the question about whom you can trust. This film trailer mashup will have no effect on the potential market or value of the copyrighted works. The works used will be referenced, and it will provide a new context for the original work, which provides a justification for fair use.

My mashup will primarily focus on the movie Finding Nemo. In the movie Finding Nemo, a clownfish named Marlin is searching for his lost son Nemo. Marlin meets and befriends many sea creatures along the way, and they help him on his journey to find Nemo. In Finding Nemo, the messages portrayed are: listen to your friends and family, trust your friends, accept help from others, and don’t be afraid to move outside your comfort zone. This story of a search for someone who is missing parallels the plot of the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, in which a CIA operative searches for the location of the Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama Bin Laden. The mashup of the two films will illustrate how you have to be careful whom you can trust. The world is full of trickery and deceit, and it is definitely not safe when you step outside your comfort zone. This mashup will capture scenes from the Finding Nemo movie trailer and sound and voices from the movie Zero Dark Thirty. By providing a new perspective on the original message of Finding Nemo through the mashup of these two films, I believe this educational project will qualify as fair use of intellectual property.

In my understanding of copyright infringement I wouldn't label a mashup trailer to be an example of such an activity.  When people discuss the art of plagiarizing its always about stating your sources and quoting the original statement or material properly.  In terms of the mashup trailer I believe that the use of parts of a film to mix with another audio track or voice over is a proper use of material that doesnt harm the original copy.  

For my mashup trailer I am going to use the audio from the Pain and Gain trailer and mix it with clips from the Hangover Series.  I chose these two pieces because the audio from the Pain and Gain trailer holds some comedic value to it which will make it a little easier to mix with scenes from the Hangover series.  I hope to accomplish creating a mashup trailer that both exhibits the use of the audio from Pain and Gain and the video clips from the Hangover Series. Ultimately I hope the video is not choppy and back and forth but a reasonable knockoff to what legitimate movie trailers provide; information about the film, a glimpse of the action and comedy, and a reasonable pitch for why you should come see the moive. 

Mashup film trailers are a growing source of media that exemplify creativity and in most cases humor. They tend to be aesthetically appeasing when made properly, as seen through the numerous videos on youtube and other sites. As explained through the documentary seen in our homework assignments, clips in these videos should not be used for one's personal gain financially and should not be infringed upon. Rather, they should be used as "sources" to help make a completely different and unrelated body of work. Different editing tools used in video applications like Camtasia will help in making mashups more creative rather than just copies. Many mashups are considered "new insights" that basically use previous works in a completely different and non-infringement type of manner. In this class, the works will be referenced and since they are being used for educational purposes rather than benefiting one's self socially or financially, the should fall under fair use.

For my mashup, I will be voicing Anchorman over clips from The Lord of the Rings: the fellowship of the ring. While seeming to be complete opposites, these two choices were pretty important when I first considered this project. They both show journeys into the unknown for the protagonists. Granted, Frodo's journey into the unknown takes 3 long movies, him and Ron Burgundy both share the same general path. Ron is faced with having a woman anchor in Veronica Corningstone while Frodo is faced with leaving the Shire and diving into the unknowns of Middle Earth. I thought juxtaposing those two different journeys would add a comic twist as they are both so vastly different both in meaning and genre. Ron Burgundy is portrayed as having a large and commanding voice and often utters pretty ignorant phrases towards a lot of gender issues and history issues. Frodo is the exact opposite in that he has a smaller voice and is always in a state of panic, something that I thought would be interesting to voice over with Ron's voice. The overall funny scenes and music sequences from the Anchorman movie add comic relief to the seriousness of LOTR which is something I definitely wanted to capitalize on. Due to the large amount of material I can work with in LOTR, it'll make it a lot easier to go about making a trailer over the audio of Anchorman. Overall, I hope my mashup comically displays an interpretation on how we must adapt to change. Both the movies I plan to use  have a theme on "change" but go through two completely different avenues. I plan to change the clips up completely through voice over and different clip editing to show a comic perception, which thus is under fair use as the videos will have a completely different meaning. Not only that, but I am using this for educational purposes and in no way am taking credit for the making of the two individual movies, which also goes along with fair usage. 

Mashup film trailers allow perceptions to be challenged by taking one work of art and casting it in a new light using its components so that it can tell another story.  As these works are not done for commercial gain, use only a small fraction of the copyrighted work, and do not conflict with the intended market, there is no legal or moral issue with qualifying these are fair uses of the materials.  Of course, works that are similar mashed together would have a difficult time arguing that they are transformational, as it would appear difficult to create a different narrative using like items, so the mashups would need to be noticeably changed to be considered “transformative.” 

A mannequin is perceived to be the epitome of female perfection, and many people undergo plastic surgery to attain a mannequin-esque physical precision.  In Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 film The Skin I Live In the antihero Dr. Robert Ledgard, played by Antonio Banderas, becomes obsessed with the loss of his wife and recreates her by surgically altering a kidnapped person sparing no costs, both in monetary and ethical terms.  In this film the loss of Dr. Robert Ledgard’s wife, and the recent decline and ultimate death of his daughter after her rape, pushes him over the edge to do the unthinkable, which is to capture his daughter’s rapist (Vicente) and transform him against his will into surgical reproduction of his late wife.

Pedro Almodóvar’s films have always dealt with taboo subjects regarding sexuality and incest and other ‘deviant’ behaviors.  The psychological trauma of Vicente, who is turned into the stunningly beautiful Vera, maintains his gender expression and identity of a male, is at odds with her new body eventually pretends to act like a woman to trick the captor so that Vera get what Vera wants.  On the other hand, the 1987 film Mannequin is a light fair romantic comedy in the typical ‘80s style, where an ancient Egyptian, played by Kim Cattrall, prays to the gods so that she does not have to be in a loveless arranged marriage, and instead has her prayer (comically) answered where she becomes transported through time to the present (1980s) and is magically trapped in the body of a mannequin that the male lead created, where while to everybody but him she appears as a normal mannequin, she can ‘come alive’ only in private and automatically reverts whenever anybody else could possibly see her. 

These movies talk about unconditional love regardless of the social construct that society places on people.  These two men were viewed as odd by their peers but nonetheless they move forward with their relationships without really caring what society thinks and what the consequences of their actions could be by breaking these societal rules.  Additionally, both men obsessively crafted their woman into their ideal of perfection. 

This project will use the visuals from the movie The Skin I Live In mashed up into the audio of the trailer from the movie Mannequin. 

Regarding the fair use legality, the educational purposes of this work will be to encourage people to be open minded about gender and to not view people in a binary way that is widespread and considered ‘normal’ where everything else is considered ‘deviant.’  This work will humanize the obsession these men have and will hopefully make people understand that not everyone has to fit the same mold and those who deviate should not be ostracized.  The market for each work will not be impacted.

To give insights into just how different the two movies are, here are their trailers.

The Skin I Live In:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EolQSTTTpI4

Mannequin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr9HbZ-mbdU

For my mashup trailer, I plan on using the Lion King trailer with clips from Sweeney Todd. I decided to use these two films because they have similar themes. They both somewhat deal with revenge and re-inventing yourself. I thought it would be humorous as well because Sweeney Todd is a very violent film which features a lot of murders while The Lion King is a Disney movie. 

I intend on creating my mash up by compiling several different euphemisms.  One example includes a clip from Me, Myself, and Irene where Jim Carey takes the neighbors newspaper and squats in the yard to "take care of business" then the scene shifts to an ice cream server filling a cup with chocolate soft serve ice cream.  The mash up will just serve as a consolidation of funny euphemism; I would think it would be funny to most people.  I believe it qualifies for fair use because I am neither using a substanital portion of any one video nor am i using it for commercial use. 

A mashup most offer an argument to qualify as fair use.  I think my argument will surface as I began choosing the specific clips that contain euphemisms. 

80% of the cars you see in automotive advertising are created with CGI, and many other industries are rapidly catching up. CGI is faster and cheaper than traditional product photography, and enables polish and perfection impossible to obtain in the real world.

For my project, I will be combining live-action footage shot on a cell phone with 3D animation, which is basically the same thing as stop motion, in a way. The video will show a series of shots of the interior of my home. 3D models of luxury, hi-tech status objects like sports cars and flatscreen TVs will intersect and pass through walls, floors and other objects (similar to the phenomenon of "clipping" in video games, in which a 3D object glitches through the boundaries set for it by the developers (http://www.shotbyrobert.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/whale-car.jpg).)

The purpose of this video, which will be titled "Ghosts", will be to explore the artificial but ever-present consumerist ideals that shape our lives. A common concern in CGI is producing images that look "too real" - for consumers to accept an image, CGI artists must add certain imperfections, such as lens distortion, chromatic aberration, and motion blur, that we are accustomed to in photographic images. I will partially or entirely bypass this step in order to create a sense of unreality and a stark contrast between the slick, shiny CG products and the drab interiors and shaky, blurry handheld camera footage.

http://techonomy.com/2012/10/real-or-rendered-how-3d-imagery-is-changing-the-way-you-shop/

http://www.blenderguru.com/the-1-reason-your-render-looks-fake/