Here's an interview with Jonathan McIntosh where we discuss his Buffy vs. Edward remix, the vidding community, and the greater value of video remixing.

TR: What did you want to accomplish with Buffy vs Edward?

JM: I wanted to create a remix dealing with the subtleties of gender and romance in mainstream media, not an easy task in mash-up form. I had seen the Twilight movie and I read the first couple of books and I was horrified by the fact that the Twilight series takes all the progress in gender roles and reverts it back at least 200 years. My goal was to show Edward Cullen’s controlling and overprotective behaviour for what it is, and to do that in a sort of funny way, and to have that done by a strong female character from a different series. I thought one of the best ways to do that would be to have Buffy the Vampire Slayer meet him. Juxtaposing these two characters highlights how backwards the Twilight series is in terms of gender, really how anti-feminist it is. That was the goal: to make it funny but also highlight the patriarchal nature and stalkeriness of Edward.

TR: Why use remix to make your point about Twilight? Why not shoot your own parody?

JM: If you were writing a paper on the Twilight film, you would quote what Edward said from the movie. Same with remix – I want to quote what he’s actually saying. I want you to be able to see him say it and have all of the filmic and narrative elements present. So the lighting is there, the tone that he uses, the camera angle, all from the actual shots in the movie. It’s more powerful, more poetic, it’s more believable, it’s funnier, and it has a higher impact, because it’s the actual actor in the actual scenes.

Also, for good or bad reasons, high production values tend to equal legitimacy in our mainstream media culture. People will respond to something that they know. And what they know, because they see it everyday on TV or in the movies, is high production values – a certain style, certain lighting, etc. So using the actual clips lends legitimacy to the critique, I think. It’s an easier way to relate to an audience that’s already familiar with the source material.

TR: In what way did vidding and the vidding community influence this remix?

JM: I am in no way an expert on vidding, but for those who might not be aware, it’s an artform that’s been around since the mid-seventies. It’s deeply connected to fan cultures and fan fiction, just extended into video form. There’s a rich history of mostly women remixing (or “vidding”) pop culture narratives. And sometimes these vids, as they’re called, are making an argument, or doing a character study, or doing in-depth looks at various relationships, etc. It’s like using video to create literary criticism of TV and movies.

The sympathetic nature and fannish quality of vidding is one of the things that I think makes it work so well. Initially it took a while before I understood how powerful, important, and sometimes subversive it was as a remixing genre.

Lots of vids will celebrate shows, relationships, subtexts or storylines – especially ones that break standard or stereotypical gender roles or narratives. While many other vids have an argument to make, and some of them will subtly (or no so subtly) criticize various aspects of a beloved TV show: characters, story lines, or the lack of queer characters, or the lack of strong female characters, etc. The idea is that you can enjoy something from the mass media but still criticize certain aspects of it to varying degrees. That’s a subtle understanding that seems to me a little bit lacking in many of the more political videos from my own remix genre.

A lot of political remix work can be really fantastic but it’s sort of based on ridicule. So it’s ridiculing the TV show, or it’s ridiculing the source. Sometimes, certain situations call for just flat out ridicule – I agree with that and I think it can be very important. But other times, conversations require a sort of subtle, respectful, and still pointed analysis, especially if you want to talk about race, class, gender, or sexuality. This is where, I think, vidding often succeeds in ways that political remix video sometimes does not.

I don’t know if I would have been able to envision making something that’s a 6-minute narrative about gender roles, as in Buffy Vs Edward, if I had not been influenced by the vidding community. As a political remixer, I was fortunate to be schooled by vidders like Laura Shapiro, and also by Francesca Coppa, who is a founding member of the Organization for Transformative Works. By listening to them and watching a large body of vidding work, I learned about how to make more complex and subtle analyses of mass media in remix form. I’m certainly very sympathetic to Buffy and the whole Buffy universe (it’s my all time favourite TV show), and that comes through in my remix. So the audience is not supposed to go “Oh, see how TV is stupid?” They’re supposed to go “Oh, see how Buffy was awesome!” I kinda pit the Buffy TV show against the Twilight movie to deal with gender in a more complex way than I had done previously. So I would say that vidding was essential to me being even able to imagine doing something like this, even though I would not call Buffy vs. Edward a “vid”.

TR: Can you talk about any of the technical challenges of Buffy vs Edward?

JM: I found that it was really hard to find convincing ways to have characters interact from totally different sources. One tool that was really helpful was fan transcripts: people take TV shows that they love, or movies, and they transcribe them and put them online. With Google’s advanced search I was able to find fan scripts for all the episodes of Buffy. I’d search for certain phrases or words, and I’d go through them quickly and say “Oh, well I know that Buffy now says this kind of thing in episode 44 so I’ll go look at the episode and see if it works.” And sometimes the transcripts even have notes on location or time of day, so I know if there’s a certain environment, and if Buffy’s saying something there, then maybe I can use it. Luckily Buffy was 140 episodes or thereabouts, so I had a lot to draw from. But Twilight was 2 hours. I almost used every single frame of Edward.

TR: What political purpose do you think video remixing serves in general?

JM: Remixing is a form of critical media literacy that I think is becoming increasingly important to our culture. Just by viewing a remix, you are consciously or subconsciously noticing all the different sources – a movie, a song, a news clip, an actor – and in your head you’re kinda deconstructing them, because there’s all these different parts that have been pulled apart, re-framed, re-contextualized and put back together.

On the flip side, when someone is making a remix, even a simple one, they are literally deconstructing mass media and then creatively reconstructing it. So they’re engaging with mass media messages to make something new in a way that is analytical and creative. Lessig calls this the “read-write culture.” Corporate media traditionally operates as “read-only.” But now with remix, culture can be more “read-write” and more participatory (provided you have technology, the time and the money to participate). So I think that just the remix form itself has a lot of value.

In terms of the content of online video remix, it could be anything. It depends on the people who are making it. Remixes can challenge the sort of oppressive, sound-byte driven messages of mass-media, or they can just repeat mainstream messages back in remix form.

Obviously I hope for people to be subversive and critical in their remix work and to challenge mass media messages and myths, especially in terms of the more oppressive aspects of corporate culture. The extra value comes when we remix the source material and also remix the message. If you’re just regurgitating what the media tells you, including all the stereotypes, racism, sexism, hatred, and so on, then I find much less value in that, because it’s not remixing the message, it’s just remixing the material.

    UPDATE

A Facebook campaign calling for people to download the Rage Against the Machine track Killing in the Name of instead of the X Factor 2009 winner Joe McElderry's single the Climb, has been successful. RATM are the Christmas no. 1, but who really wins? The rights to killing in the name of are owned by Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony. Simon Cowell's record company, Syco Music is a subsidiary of Sony. They are all one big happy family and although the simple reading of what has happened is that the X Factor single has been denied a spot at No. 1 in the UK single charts this Christmas as a result of a Facebook campaign, the reality is more complex and ultimately very ironic. This rebellion, instead of raging against the machine, may have served only to strengthen it...    UPDATE

From November 28th until December 5th, the Leuven International Short Film Festival will be hosting a free expo called "Mashup the Tube," featuring remixes like Kutiman's Thru-You videos, various trailer mashes, and entries in the Total Recut remix challenge.    UPDATE

[from Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net]

A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I've ever seen.

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a "three-strikes" plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to "impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement" (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright "militias" can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

Mandelson is also gunning for sites like YouSendIt and other services that allow you to easily transfer large files back and forth privately (I use YouSendIt to send podcasts back and forth to my sound-editor during production). Like Viacom, he's hoping to force them to turn off any feature that allows users to keep their uploads private, since privacy flags can be used to keep infringing files out of sight of copyright enforcers.

This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks. It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.

This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.

More to follow, I'm sure, once Open Rights Group and other activist organizations get working on this. In the meantime, tell every Briton you know. If we can't stop this, it's beginning of the end for the net in Britain.    UPDATE

[from BoingBoing.net]

"Here's a 20-minute, must-see lecture on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement -- the secret copyright treaty currently being negotiated, which stands to fatally wound all user-generated content sites from mailing lists to YouTube; which stands to criminalize kids for noncommercial file-sharing; which stands to put your internet connection in jeopardy if anyone in your house is accused of infringement, and much, much more."    UPDATE

In the immortal words of Eli Horwatt...

Towards a Poor Cinema: A Credo of Recycled Cinema

1. Cinema, like other arts, should remain in a constant state of flux. Stasis is the enemy of art the same way it is the enemy of science and medicine.

2. The dialectic, in which a thesis, antithesis and eventual synthesis are produced is the most productive means of facilitating a constructive, socially relevant artistic tradition. Artistic output is a conversational practice by which ideas and sensibilities are evaluated, imitated, critiqued, devalued, buried and eventually resurrected. All of these components are part of a rich process of evolution by which societies and artists contribute. This tradition currently has little or no place in the infrastructure of cinema.

3. Current economic and social conditions have strained the desired dialectic from taking place. Several hindrances have arisen. A.)Studios have divested themselves of earlier models of funding vying instead to spend large sums of money to attract large audiences with astronomical returns; B) the endowments and benefactors of other art forms are not present for cinema because of the immense popularity of the form and immense commercial successes possible thus eliminating funding for those who haven’t been granted access by gatekeepers of popular distribution corporations; C) The labor involved in the business of making films have a strong grasp on the industry. A combination of self-sustaining unionization which makes it difficult to self-produce, guarded and expensive distribution platforms which make it unfeasible to deliver films to audiences, and a nearly universal acceptance of these parameters has made true independence a fallacy. A poor cinema will abscond from every one of these tyrannical forces in the film-making process.

4. We believe as Cocteau did when he stated that "film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper." In other words all commercial cinema is the sale and marketing of products by corporate monopolies designed as a part of what Guy Debord has called “the spectacle.” These products have been tailored to appeal to mass audiences based on the successes and failures of the past, making innovation (which translates as economic risk) more and more sparse.

5. We believe that the new technological innovations made possible by internet distribution platforms, digital video, and the tools of the age of reproducibility must be harnessed by individuals with a commitment to re-instituting an artistic dialectic. We believe this is the only possible step in reviving an art form which admittedly for a lengthy period of time necessitated significant capitol for materials and participation, but has recently been dramatically stunted by a rising trend of artistic stasis.

6. We believe that the Recycled Cinema is the most powerful pedagogical tool in this process of reinvigoration. The goal in this circumstance is not only to think, but to remember. It is a revaluation of the art form in the hopes of discovery and critical deconstruction in an artistic laboratory. We support this process in part because the tools necessary to produce art are more widely available with an enormous cannon of works to detourn, re-construct, manipulate and addend.

7. While the financial irreducibility of cinema as we know it today plays a part in our support for Recycled Cinema, or the act of utilizing appropriated and sometimes “found” footage, our ultimate conclusions in this direction are liminally based on money, though we find this fact very convenient. The “cinema povera” or cinema of poverty allowed through the pillaging of images makes it a revolutionary practice on a number of levels. Ideally, a person is re-claiming the works of those who erred, mistreated or denigrated the medium so that they may redeem them by highlighting, altering or critiquing their work. Recycled Cinema in itself is an end towards showing the essentially uniformity and creative vapidity of commercial cinema.

8. The financial infrastructure by which films are made is fundamentally at odds with the practice of recycled cinema on a number of counts. The studio model, by which large sums of capital are invested up in hopes of larger returns has no place in a system in which films are made often “on the fly” with limited need for materials which can be distributed and accessed for free on internet video platforms. This aesthetic and economic difference will not be left as a simple artistic divergence. Capitalist forces in the industry will always retaliate against individuals offering competitive products at zero cost to the public. Copyright infringement suits will always be a looming threat to appropriators of footage, but for now the relative obscurity of the medium is its best defense against truly crippling legal action. But just as various forms of online video have had enormous overnight success, some unfortunate spokesman of the digital age will be left trying to explain to intellectual property owners the difference between appropriation and piracy, fair use and theft, and all of the other artistic practices of the post-modern era. Inevitably they will fail to move the holders, and it is likely they will fail to persuade the courts. These are necessary battles that must be waged.

9. The fading remnants of independent film (a term usually falsely attributed) and the tradition of the art film has little or no relationship to the burgeoning recycled cinema. These traditions, which are endemic to the academy, highly intellectual and theory based art institutions is produced by a fringe of the society for themselves. It has little or no interest in harnessing the popular distribution platform that is the internet which Recycled Cinema has been a part of since the inception of internet video portals.

10. The purpose of detournement, compilation, mashups and other techniques attributed to recycled cinema is to reach to the root of the artistic stasis present in the commercial cinema. Mashup films which combine two or more films expose the uniformity present in narrative today. The most skilled mashup filmmakers will use the tropes and styles of commercial films like an armory of easily imitated techniques, ultimately undermining the elements present. In the process these tropes and styles can be understood as easily employed “tricks” which require no artistry in their execution and only an understanding of quick ways to manipulate people. Compilation filmmakers like Craig Baldwin seek to discover the subconscious of styles and genre through the prism of history and culture. In this way, he exposes the temporal nature of commercial cinema—which stands in stark contrast to the universality and timelessness of real works of art.

11. Ultimately the Recycled Cinema offers tools to evaluate an even more threatening tyranny over independent artistry; the universal specter of narrative, most contemptibly in the stylistic mold of the novel. Much can be said of the novel’s rise to become the foremost model of narrative structure, but ultimately the most important idea to note is the needless choice made by filmmakers to perpetuate it. The single most differentiating attribute of avant-garde film from commercial narrative cinema is its reliance on non-novelistic models. Whereas avant-garde films overwhelmingly rely on literary traditions like poetry, the short story, stream-of-consciousness, and religious literature; non-literary art forms like painting, sculpture, animation, and dance; social sciences like psychology, and anthropology; and human phenomena like ritual, mythology, synesthesia and the subconscious. The novelistic mode has dominated cinema because in film-making’s nascent stages, novels were the most popular art form in the western world. We believe as Bruce Elder when he wrote “narrative is the artistic structure of technocracy. The cinema we need, the cinema that combats technocracy will, therefore, be non-narrative.” The co-incidence of the novel and the industrial revolution which followed soon after has devastating implications. Narrative at its foundations is a cause and effect, chain of events structurally identical to the assembly line on a factory floor. This linear means of representing human life is often defended by the false adage that human life is best represented by narrative. Instead, we are faced with propaganda, aimed at witling realistic events into a highly unrealistic framework.

    UPDATE

From October 29 till November 1, the international Forum on Access to Culture and Knowledge in the Digital Age is organised in Barcelona. Exgae, Networked Politics and the Free Knowledge Institute, three renown and respected organisations working in the field of civil rights are behind this important event.

The Forum will be a major international meeting of the most relevant organizations and individuals working on the international scene, who are engaged in reflecting on the social and economic challenges of the dissemination of culture and knowledge in the digital age.

While the European Union discusses legislation and self-regulation proposals, at the state and community level, the forum aims to articulate the valuable proposals that are emerging from civil society, so that it too can participate in this legislative process. The forum is based on the idea of finding ways to harmonise the recognition of creativity, innovation and investment with the civil rights of access to knowledge and culture and with sustainable development.

http://fcforum.net    UPDATE

"The Advisory Board claimed it commissioned the research from a team of academics at University College London, who it transpires got the 7m figure from a paper published by Forrester Research.

The More or Less team hunted down the relevant Forrester paper, but could find no mention of the 7m figure, so they contacted the report's author Mark Mulligan.

Mulligan claimed the figure actually came from a report he wrote about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. That report was privately commissioned by none other than the music trade body, the BPI...

The 7m figure had actually been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m. That 6.7m was gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software - in other words, only 136 people.

It gets worse. That 11.6% of respondents who admitted to file sharing was adjusted upwards to 16.3% "to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it." The report's author told the BBC that the adjustment "wasn't just pulled out of thin air" but based on unspecified evidence."    UPDATE

"People accused of breaking copyright over the internet will have their internet connections cut off under tough new laws to be proposed by the UK government today. The decision is noteworthy since it was ruled out by the government's own Digital Britain report in June as going too far. The Open Rights Group believes the government is breaking its own consultation guidelines by bring in the proposals in the way they have and asks people to write to their MPs."

"Yet again, we see knee-jerk reactions and policy swerves, this time in direct contravention of the government's own consultation guidelines. Those guidelines are there for a reason: to make sure government policy is balanced and considered. We will be making a formal complaint. The result of these proposals is likely to be protest, challenges and public arguments in the run-up to the General election. Popular movements in France, Sweden and elsewhere have kick-started over similar measures.

That will do nobody any good, neither politicians nor rights-holding industries, as copyright's reputation suffers further damage.

Copyright is under threat: from heavy handed business lobbying and simplistic enforcement proposals." -[The Open Rights Group]    UPDATE

From PiratePartyUK - "Now the party can really start. It's time for us to tell the world that we exist, to recruit members, raise funds and gear up to fight the General Election. The officers and web team have built the framework that the party needs to get going, now it's time for YOU to make things happen. Join the party, tell the media about the party,tell your friends about the party, take part in policy and news debates on the forum, join our Facebook group, donate or set up a regular payment to provide financial support, set up a branch in your constituency, school or workplace, join the specialist workings groups for members with key skills like lawyers and journalists and volunteer to take part in canvassing and campaigning in your constituency at the general election..."     UPDATE