Event Horizon Recut - tonal change

Event Horizon was released in 1997 and it was a strange hybrid Sci-Fi/Horror film.  What I remember most about the film was the spiraling camera shots from within space. I also remember the horror, oh the horror!

There is something of beauty locked within this film, and it could call for a RECUT. The main objective would be to change the tone of the film. The main challenge is to take the horror out of the film and replace it with romance and comedy. This could be achieved by replacing the soundtrack and by possibly cutting to dream sequences instead of nightmares. The tone change in itself will create some humor.

Editing with Quicktime 7 Pro

Man. I love making rough edits with Quicktime Pro 7. This makes for a simple way to COPY + PASTE the IN (I) and OUT (O) points of a quicktime movie into a NEW PLAYER. This allows you to create rough edits and prepare material for further editing in a program like Final Cut.

I like to use a program called HANDBRAKE, it rip movie files from DVDs.

I open these files in Quicktime Pro Player. Then I set IN and OUT points for chunks of the movie that I want to edit with. Then I COPY these points, and PASTE the footage into a NEW PLAYER.

After I extract the footage from the movie, I then export it as a quicktime movie. This movie becomes a condensed version that I can then remix in Final Cut Pro.

WHICH MEANS: You can pretty much remix any movie you can get your grubby hands on.

Walk The Batman

On stage he is Johnny Cash, the man in black. By night, he is the man in the black Batman suit as he crusades around cities high on drugs and alcohol.

Will Johnny Cash face his addiction of being Batman, and be able to save his true fans locked behind bars at Folsom?

 

This is one of my original remixes that was thought up during a hike with my friend Colten. There is an actual 15 minute cut of this project.

Video Editor as a DJ of visuals

DJs have been manipulating sounds for decades, and arranging them into new works of art. They sample sound from songs, video games, movies, TV shows, pop art, and then recompose them into their own personal expressions.

With the emergence of consumer non-linear editing systems, now the video editor can play a role as a visual DJ. An art form of remixing movies and TV shows into new interpretations is on the rise.

If a DJ can sample sound and get away with it, why can’t an editor sample visuals from several different sources and create a new work of art? Hopefully, these video mashups will eventually fall safely in the parody category, and these creative expressions can be protected from copyright law. Why should someone be punished for being creative?

Where does someone start in creating a mashup? The first step in the creative process is generating a cleaver title that merges multiple works together. For instance, Walk The Batman is a mashup of Johnny Cash as Batman (Walk The Line, mixed with the Batman movies). This is a good starting point.

How do you go about mixing these two distinctly different movies together? One method is overdubbing. Any chance possible, merge Johnny Cash and Batman together through dialogue. When appropriate, get Johnny Cash dialogue coming out of Batman’s mouth, or when Batman’s mouth in not visible on-screen. Merging soundtracks can also build the illusion that these are non-disparate films.

Another method to sell a mashup is through visual compositing, masking, and literally merging the visual information together through new “Special FXs”.  For instance, put a Batman symbol ring on Johnny Cash, or show him holding a Batman mask. New titles and ingenious combination of information all help build the overall mashup; put the source films in the same space and time.  

The most important piece of the process is creating a storyline that works between the source films. In Walk The Batman, Johnny Cash gets obsessed with saving his true fans locked behind bars at Folsom, and does so by masquerading as Batman and breaking them out of prison. To do this, locate Batman footage that appears to place him in Folsom prison.

Mashups are often funny, but they are also educational in the way they explore narrative storytelling. Movies are broken down to a sequence of scenes. Within a scene, there is room to change dialogue, character motive, music, sound design, and overall interpretation of character actions and reactions. By re-cutting a popular movie, a viewer can get a good sense of editing technique and how that affects storytelling.

Vader Mash-Up (James Earl Jones)

A mashup is the combination of multiple sources to form a new seamless work. This video mashup works well due to the fact you never see Vader's mouth move. This allows the artist to draw from other movie sources featuring dialogue from James Earl Jones and blend them into this parody.

What this does is creates a new interpretation of work, and opens up editing possibilities to explicit humor.

More to come on this topic.

Movie Mash-up Ideas?

A movie-mashup is the combination of movies that are seamlessly cut into a new movie. I consider the mash-up as a new creative expression that falls safely into the parody catagory. This creative expression is much akin to what a DJ does with music; finding new interpretations of creative works.

Please comment on this blog if you have some ideas for a movie mash-up. To help generate this topic, here are a list of some creative movie mash-up posters that could make for some great movies.

Trailer Remixes change context

In pursuit of movie remixing, I came across a couple of movie trailers that were remixed to demonstrate creativity and how tone changes can effect material. One of the best videos is this Titanic 2 trailer. I've been entertaining the idea of taking the films of a particular actor, and creating a through-line in the story that can seamlessly blend the films together. This example beat me to the punch, as I was even considering Dicaprio as a likely candidate.

This next example shows how a twisted nightmare of a movie like The Shining, can be recut into a light-hearted family flick.

Recutting Movies

Information. It is everywhere. New creativity, and new media comes to our senses in a flash. How is it possible that we can process all of these images, all of these sounds?

As a video editor, I soak up images. I record them in my temporary memory which then can be accessed for later ideas. I find myself always reworking images in my head, trying them out in different sequences.

I watch movies and I start changing them in my mind. What would it look like to take out a few scenes? How does the story change by mixing up the sequence of events?

With digital technology, it is now easy to recut movies to watch them the way you'd like to see them. For example, I love the movie The Royal Tenenbaums, but a certain suicide scene prevents me from repeat viewings of that movie. With a series of digital tricks, I can now import this movie into Final Cut Pro, and within a few hours I can produce a new version that can be watched on repeat.

How refreshing it is to take a raw movie like Water World and chop this 136 minute flick down to its essence of 12 minutes. Take linear out of the equation, and the story-line opens up to the imagination. Sequencing, music changes, and even some special FX, and scene editing can all help build a new interpretation of a Hollywood film gone bad.