The Car: a ds106 mashedup production

The Car Mashup from Jim Groom on Vimeo.

The last week or so in the digital storytelling class has been a blast for me, particularly because right now we’re playing around with mashups with everything from film to video games to music to the fine arts. The assignment was due Tuesday, but I had a hell of a week so this one got done a little late. And to the ds106ers credit, almost all of them had theirs done and submitted well before me. What’s more, so many of them did amazing mashups—the video section of this course went better than in the Spring, but it still needs work. But to the class’s credit, their imaginations made it seem like an unconditional succes. As for my mashup, as always it was very fun to do, if not painstaking. I like the detail work in mashups, matching up dialogue and interpreting and reworking one film to visually conform to another, completely different one. I was inspired by a series of 70s and 80s horror film trailers. When I saw the 1977 trailer for The Car, I immediately knew I could cut up Cars (2006)—which I had seen over 30 times with my son a couple of years back. It helped that I knew the film inside and out. It’s by no means perfect, but I think it begins to accomplish my main objective: make Lightening McQueen a car from Hell. And even if it falls short, I do think I’m getting better at both the quicker action edits as well as the pacing. It’s hard to capture a narrative in two minutes, and playing with film trailers for mashups is a perfect assignment in this regard. And having finally finished the assignment, albeit late, I’m thrilled to have returned to and finished some “creative” video stuff—it has been too long.

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7 Responses to The Car: a ds106 mashedup production

  1. Alan says:

    I cannot think of too many teachers that do the assignments they give theIr students, you set the bar high.

    You can run, you can hide, but you cannot escape (squeal) HONK HONK crash! Those cute cartoon cars are evil….

  2. Prof Hanley says:

    Jim – -these mashups are great! I’ve been using the “mashup” as pedagogical tool in a gen. ed. American lit. course out here on the Left coast – – mainly to help my students “own” poetry and to underscore how “performance” (in its broadest sense – – from reading to re-mixing and re-making) is integral to “interpretation.” E.g. auto-tuning Whitman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkwtndYnYc) and Walt in Halo 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiqTRmbe8b4).

    IMO – – the mashup not only encourages students to re-mix poems, but also to “re-mix” their own identities. Disfruta!

  3. Reverend says:

    @cogdog,

    Doing the assignment sis kinda why I’m teaching it. All crap I want to do but often get to bogged down in thinking about doing it. It is a nice break 🙂

    @Larry,

    We have to do that class, that auto-tuning Whitman is awesome. I can see so much beauty from a film class that encourages this across schools, countries, and even disciplines.

    Need to get my head out of my ass.

  4. Reverend says:

    @Prof Hanley,

    I’m sorry I had to go crazy and tweet out these examples, they are brilliant. I am showing them in class Thursday and blogging them? Have you already blogged them? Do you hve a blog beyond the wikispace wiki?

  5. Prof Hanley says:

    Rev – – thanks. Your barrage of mashups reminded me to go back to the Whitman mashups and think some more about them. Student creativity is the most powerful pedagogical tool! (BabylonIsBurning.net is under construction – – do you know the Ruts tune from ’79?)

  6. Andy Rush says:

    Awesome! You nailed it.

    • Reverend says:

      Thanks Andy,

      You know that means a lot coming from DTLT’s greatest actor and digital video pioneer. And this section on video would have been nothing without your indispensable help, it made all the difference. And your work is all too apparent on all the students’ video projects.

      Now we have to get a Digital Video class together. We would to teach that as a watch great films, then have students film sections of them for practice. Kinda like a place to watch and talk about films with a sick ass lab component 🙂

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