Editing From Samples

We will be returning to bad movie reviews after this short intermission! But actually, I know I’m a couple weeks behind on my 52in52, I have a catch up post to go over all the movies I’ve seen and it will be coming out soon. In the mean time, I wanted to share a weird coincidence.

I recently finished Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow. In it, the main character Trent likes to make his own movies using scenes from his favourite actor’s movies. For example, he compiled every movie where that actor was driving a car and editted it in such a way that it looks like every car is driving into eachother and crashes. He consistently made videos from samples. Reading that I thought it was odd. Maybe odd is the wrong word. Of course everyone is entitled to make art in the way they seem fit as long as it isn’t hurting an unconsenting person, its just on my time on the internet, I haven’t seen much of that before. I’ve seem movie highlight compilations, movie spoofs/poops, character compilations, redubs, but not a recutting to make a new movie. I accepted it as Trent’s preferred medium and moved on.

That was until I was finishing this video by Below the Fray.

I stopped about half way a couple weeks ago and almost immediately after I continued it, Blake describes how he spent a Friday recreating the themes of a music video using sample stock footage. He would find relevant and irrelevant clips, edit and bend the footage to fit the narrative he had in his head. This was very similar to Trent’s movies. What a coincidence! I guess people do do that.

Honestly, this post was just for me to share this coincidence. I want to post more mundane thoughts so expect more. I hope again it goes without saying that I am not saying editting samples into a new narrative isn’t art. Of course it is art! It’s just a new one for me to observe in the wild.