Video Remix Assignment

The goal of this assignment is to take one of the films or television shows that we’ve watched this semester and create a short video remix. Your video, no more than 5 minutes long, should tell a story distinct from the original text. The goal is not to make a funny mashup or a fake trailer – instead you should manipulate the given footage to create a new fabula. It is an exercise to highlight how editing can tell stories, so you should feel free to be creative in how you recut the original. You should work in partners, with people who do not have strong video editing skills partnering with students who do.

See the FMMC Wiki for a tutorial on how to extract DVD clips and edit within Final Cut Pro. Ethan Murphy can help provide access and answer questions about the technology. Students should check-out DVDs on reserve for the class in the library – you should rip them onto a hard drive or server in Wilson Media Lab, and then can edit them in Wilson or Axinn. Upload the finished product to MiddMedia per the wiki instructions, and post them to the course blog. Videos will be presented in class on November 9.

4 thoughts on “Video Remix Assignment

  1. Patricia

    For our remix video project, Bianca and I were interested in working with Lost. After some discussion, we decided that it would interesting to turn the “Walkabout” episode into an actual walkabout with John Locke and Kate as a couple, and Kate functioning as the character of “Helen”–John’s actual romantic interest in the series. Because Lost is a show with a large cast, it was very difficult finding moments where John and Kate were alone together. Our task as video editors was even more challenging than we thought because finding perfect eyeline matches within a single episode was almost impossible. After diligently working on constructing a narrative that could actually be translated with the material before us, we set to work cutting and editing and muting sounds if the situation called for it. The finished project–while far from perfect–is a great attempt at creating something new with something pre-existing. Had we been allowed to draw from other episodes our task might have been somewhat easier; however, given the circumstances and confines of the assignment, I think the video came out rather nicely.

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