For Remix week, I looked at a few references on what remixing is. Below is a video of me trying to explain it to my roommate!

I also looked at a few examples of remixes.

Buffy vs. Edward

The first example I looked at was the Buffy vs. Edward remix. Holy cow. Yeaaa. I’ll try to focus on just the remix itself. It’s well done. Instead of just putting clips together, the author crossed voices and background noises between the clips instead of just cutting the videos completely. This creates a bit more of a seamless transition between the two worlds. The combination of these two could be considered natural. So why was this created?

In this re-imagined narrative, Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy’s eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed – in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Oh dear god. Nevermind. Sorry I asked.

It’s funny if you just don’t like Twilight, and yes, it makes it more obvious how creepy Edward is.

Barack Obama Singing “Call Me Maybe”

I’ve seen this video before! It’s incredibly entertaining. After listening to the references on what remixing is, I think this is a great example. No matter what your political leanings are, we can all admit that President Obama has charisma. He’s likable and playful. Clearly, he’s a great candidate for this type of remix.

The author of the videos has put together little snippets of President Obama’s speeches to build the lyrics for “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. At the time that this video came out, June 4, 2012, this song was HUGE. Now of course, it’s like nails on a chalkboard.

But anyways. At the time, everybody was making videos to this song, because it’s a catchy freaking tune.

Honestly, every time I see videos that do this clipping of individual words, I’m stunned. Takes a lot of work to get it to sound right!

Scary Mary

Why did I do this to myself?! I watched the Scary ‘Mary Poppins’ Trailer and felt my childhood disappearing.

It scares me that this video was so effective. I nearly didn’t recognize it. Putting scary music behind short, but fast-paced scenes made it entirely different. What once was a happy, uplifting movie is now (because of this trailer) a scary, creepy film. This definitely shows the power of a remix. Putting a culturally significant movie into new context to create a new piece of media is what remixing is all about.