Back in 2008 Sirmixalott116 combined footage from Saved by the Bell with scenes from the film There Will Be Blood to create this re-cut trailer. The remix eerily forecasts the current ‘dirty energy’ vs. environmental ecology debate that is now raging in the United States (made more urgent by the BP Gulf catastrophe). When the students at Bayside High find out that the wealth of oil found under their campus has spilled out into their pond, they begin to challenge the power dynamic of their school and stage a protest to stop the oil development.
There Will Be Blood, a 2007 American film by Paul Thomas Anderson, was loosely based on the Upton Sinclair novel Oil! and follows a man on a ruthless quest for wealth during the oil boom. Saved by the Bell, on the other hand, was a 90′s high school sitcom that paved the way for teen shows dealing with social issues by introducing young target audiences to critical topics like drug use, drinking and driving, homelessness and environmental issues. But when remixed, the two delve into the institutional greed and environmental destruction no TV show or has yet dared to explore, despite the timeliness of the topic.
The internets have been busy over the past couple months creatively re-branding and correcting the corporate identity of the company formally known at British Petroleum. We have seen some hilarious logo re-design, mock print ads and of course the ever entertaining BPGlobalPR spoof Twitter feed. Not to be outdone online video remix has also played a part in the raging Internet vs. BP brand battle. So we here at PRV have collected a handful of our favorites.
The first of several more honest re-cut versions of the now infamous “Message From Tony Hayward” PR propaganda commercial that BP is trying to infect the internet with by buying up all the search terms relating to the disaster. Listen carefully to the audio editing in the remix below which transforms Tony’s words into something perhaps a little closer to the truth.
-
Last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward went before Congress in round one of the oil company’s Congressional hearings. As if the 60 day oil geyser hemorrhaging into the Gulf and the lack of solutions for stopping it weren’t enough, Hayward adds insult to injury by simply re-using his own words that “A Message from Tony Hayward” ad as his opening statement to the House.
-
One more remix of “A Message from Tony Hayward” ad – this time with a new overdub of Hayward’s “last words” includes a call to action to revoke BP’s Corporate Charter which you can do here.
An emotion-filled anecdote created by editing Hayward quotes with the song, “End of the World” by Skeeter Davis for the organization NRDC.
-
News footage and photographs are combined with Disney’s animated feature The Little Mermaid to provide a new meaning to the hit song Under the Sea.
-
In “A Whole Day Of Tony Hayward’s Obfuscating In Four Minute”, Ben Craw of the Huffington Post, illustrates how Hayward refuses to answer question and gives intentionally ambiguous responses to House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Because it seems that’s the real role of a leader at BP.
Can a political remix video help effect actual change in the world? YES!
Unilever’s personal care brand Dove is the again target, this time being called out by GreenPeace for the corporation’s role as the biggest single buyer of palm oil in the world, and thus, a major contributor to the destruction of rainforests because of massive palm oil plantations.
Greenpeace spoofed Dove’s Onslaught ad with great success: thanks to the public support of the campaign and the remix (which received more views on YouTube than the original ad with over a million) Unilever agreed to an “immediate moratorium on deforestation for palm oil plantations”. They also agreed to help clean up the industry by contacting the other major companies calling on them to support the moratorium. Companies like Cargill & General Mills though have still not gotten on board.
The remix did have a budget and does not actually re-edit any of the footage from the Unilever ad but it does re-create it almost shot for shot. The Greenpeace version even re-writes the lyrics for the song LA Breeze by Simian which Dove used as their soundtrack. The new updated song titled “There They Go” (referring to trees) was made specifically for this video by the Czech band Ohm Square.
Thanks to the staggering public support for our international Dove campaign in April 2008, Unilever has now agreed to play their part in saving the Paradise Forests of South East Asia. As the biggest single buyer of palm oil in the world, Unilever has a special responsibility to help clean up the industry that’s behind so much forest destruction. – GreenPeace
An internet meme has been building around the blockbuster movie Avatar, starting with the countless reviews and critics pointing out the striking plot similarities to Disney’s 1998 animated feature Pocahontas. By now there are literally dozens of re-cut trailers online making the comparison but beyond just pointing out the parallels, these mashups also demonstrate how prevalent the racist “Mighty Whitey” trope really is in Hollywood.
First up is Randy Szuch’s version which takes the audio from the official Avatar trailer and replaces the visuals with footage from Disney’s Pocahontas, amazing it works perfectly.
Our favorite political pranksters The Yes Men have spoofed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with an official looking imaginary website. As part of the project they have also created these fantastic re-dubbed video interviews with global economic, government and corporate leaders where each appear to speak in brutally honest ways about real problems and solutions. The remix video of Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) CEO Patricia Woertz apparently did not sit well with the agro-business giant because they quickly filed a takedown notice to have it removed from Youtube. Luckily for us the video is still live on vimeo.
I recently helped the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) re-dub Royal Bank of Canada’s new Olympic Flame Trail commercial. The new and improved voiceover better represents the bank’s dirty investments: since 2007, RBC has given about $17 billion dollars in loans to companies operating in the Alberta tar sands – more than any other bank. Not only is it one of the most environmentally destructive energy projects on the planet but expansion of the tar sands is trampling the rights of Indigenous peoples, destroying North American water systems and significantly increasing Canada’s carbon emissions.
Desiree D’Alessandro examines the commodification of natural resources in this remix, addressing the imminent crisis of the worldwide water shortage. Her source footage, which includes tv commercials, new segments and documentary footage, has become a major point of contention with her university, the University of California Santa Barbara. (More on this below)
UCSB declared D’Alessandro’s endeavors in acquiring and utilizing copyrighted source materials for creating remixes an “offense” as it violates the university’s Terms of Services. In order ‘to protect itself and its students’, UCSB considers any sharing of copyrighted material (music, movies, software and books included) a DMCA violation, even if, as in this case, the result is a fair use. The university also added that
appeals leads to serious legal procedures (in the past four years, no one at UCSB has ever filed ‘counter-notice’, the procedure with which people can appeal with a fair-use claim.)
The trend of policing university networks for DMCA violations is worrisome, as it usually urges the school to locate and save all student information related to the case. Thankfully, the University of Wisconsin, MIT and Boston College have refused to turn over student information and be a middle-man for groups like the RIAA who continue to endorse such network management policies.
From this debacle has come new work: D’Alessandro created a short remix that mashes screen shots of UCSB’s DMCA internet ban and scenes from the movie Step Brothers. She says,
Regardless of this incident, I am certain the Political Remix Video genre is moving toward a direction of net-neutrality, open-source access, and the deterioration of copyright restrictions.
