Assignment
Create a found footage/video collage work by appropriating and remixing audio, text and video material.
- You are not allowed to shoot new footage.
- Avoid material that is already a remix or already video art.
- Avoid very popular sources like big budget movies, look for something that hasn’t been remixed before.
- All the footage should be from the same genre/era/resolution.
- Duration 30s – 3min.
Strategies
> Formal: use unconventional editing techniques and radically transform a single source.
> Free associations: let the archive guide your process, juxtapose images based on visual or conceptual resonances.
> Music video: edit the material to a found soundtrack (instrumental music only)
I strongly discourage trying to make a coherent narrative piece (it’s very hard) and “supercuts” juxtaposing many instances of a certain trope (it takes too long to find the material).
In class exercise: Free association game
(Possibly in breakout groups of 6)
Each student in turn starts by saying a word that could be the theme of your piece
Another participant will immediately respond with a word that comes to their mind
All the participants will continue the chain of associations
There is no particular order, the only rule is whoever spoke can’t come up with the next word.
Continue until everybody contributed at least once (twice if in breakout groups).
The student who started the chain writes down all the words they remember. They will use them as search terms when looking for video material.
By Thursday January 20th
-Choose a strategy among the ones suggested here and in class – you can try something completely different, just find a system, a process. Write a paragraph describing the method: what? how? why? Post it on discord.
-Watch these LinkedIn tutorials (FKA Lynda), especially the “basic editing” section.
– Read In Defense of the Poor Image and post a response on Discord
By Tuesday January 25
-Find and download all the video sources. Bring them to class on your external hard drive.
Bring a work in progress. It’s going to be a full lab day.
By Tuesday February 1
The project is completed and uploaded to your Vimeo or Youtube account. It can be private or unlisted if you want.
It has a title (not “sound collage assignment”) that appears somewhere in the video, and a credit title at the end with your full name and year.
On Vimeo it appears with a short description, it has a representative preview image.
If it gets flagged for copyright infringement don’t worry, post it on your google drive or, as last resort, bring it to class on a hard drive.