Mashup (video)
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A video mashup (also written as video mash-up) is the combination of multiple sources of video—which usually have no relevance with each other—into a derivative work often lampooning its component sources, or another text. They are one of the latest genre of mashups, and are gaining popularity.
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[edit] History
First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one a cappella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
The same principle is then brought to the Web 2.0 world, in the form of software mashups in which two or more sets of data are combined over the Internet to create a new entity. An example is overlaying houses for sale over a Google Map.
More recently, the video mashup has come of age thanks to the likes of YouTube. This is where videos from multiple sources are edited together into a new video. Video mashup gains its popularity by the emerging of Web 2.0 model which provides simplification in acquiring source materials and for distributing the derivative videos[1], where user-generated digital video seen on sites such as Google Video and YouTube provides a large pool of digital video content source which can be used as base works for new mixes and remixes. To date, many of these video mashups have been parodies, but even music mashups are being integrated to make combined audio-visual mashups. (Examples of video mashups can be seen at the external links section.)
[edit] Styles
Mashup films can be broken down into several predominant styles and tropes. Most of the Mashups found on the internet fall into one category and more or less obey the unwritten rules of that class of film. These categories, are: word associated mashups, which like DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album unite two disparate source materials by a pun or joke found in the name; transgressive mashups which transgress the sexual norms put forth in a film, often subverting hetero-normative portrayals; and overdubbing mashups, which use the images from a film and replaces the soundtrack with new dialogue or dialogue from another work, which undermines the original narrative.[citation needed]
[edit] Word association genre
Mashups based on word associations speak more than just for the wit of the appropriator. In principle, these mashups, when executed well, express some of the central creative tenets of modern found footage filmmaking:
- Narrative film consistently follows the same filmic grammar and rarely diverts from it, making it easy to unify disparate films because of their similarities;
- The formulas inherent in narrative film are so well known by audiences that a few stylistic cues (which have been imitated to the point of cliché) can easily alert an audience to the nature of what they are watching.
Using these two principles, mashups are highly successful at parodying more than just the films they chose to amalgamate, but also at critiquing and revealing the tools of narrative filmmaking.[citation needed]
[edit] Examples
- Some exceptional word associated mashups include "Must Love Jaws", a combination of the romantic comedy Must Love Dogs and Jaws in which music cues and humorous scenes turn visual source material from Jaws into a story about a man who falls in love with a shark.
- 8½ Mile is a mashup of Federico Fellini's film 8 1/2 and Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile.
- One of the best received mashups to date is word-associated: "10 Things I Hate About Commandments", from 10 Things I Hate About You and The Ten Commandments.[citation needed]
- BrokeBack to the Future: A mashup of Brokeback Mountain and the Back to the Future trilogy, in which Doc Brown and Marty McFly are lovers.
- Advertisers & marketers leverage online video remix technology to increase brand awareness, promote user interaction and loyalty, and transform websites from one-way informational tools to full interactive online experiences. A good example for this type of video remix application is Universal Studios and Metacafe campaign to promote the hit Heroes (TV series) Season 2 DVD launch[2].
- Online media publishers also use video remix to broaden web content offering and provide an absorbing rich-media environment to allows users collaboration and interest sharing experience. One example to this application is video portal of a TV series publisher where devoted fans can do online video remixing while also extending its fan base[3].
- Social network websites empower their dynamic online community to enables members to connect, share, learn and having fun. These websites integrate rich media platform to provide members with the ability to upload videos and pictures, share media, create galleries and albums and much more[4][5].
- Non-profit organizations extend their reach to convey clear message and increase engagement to a greater audience by keeping their audience interested and involved in public conversation, by leveraging digital technology to create video remixes[6].
- Education institutions enhance the learning process than with video and rich-media, by leveraging a full featured video remix to allow all users collaboration to add video content and edit while maintaining revision history, moderation and roll-back[7].
