Use Fair Use
Assignment
We've relied heavily on fair use throughout this course. Parody, satire, and recreations are all a part of fair use.
Recreate a movie scene using video. It can be from one of your favorite movies, a classic movie, etc.
There are tons of ways you can approach the assignment—film it with a phone or camera with you as the star, direct someone else, create an illustrated flip book and record it, use your laptop and Zoom green screen, use an app on your phone, create a stop-motion-animation, or something else.
Backstory¶
I had several ideas starting into this remix and just starting one led the way. They all circled around dialogue and I ended at dialogue that was informative rather than comedic. However, the end project is still funny.
I choose to remix, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The content of this week's news, Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons, from Act 3. I suppose this could really appear on the show with all the odd intricacies of the topic. It also works well with the premise of Last Week Tonight, reflecting on the week that just passed.
Special thanks to Paul Zastrocky and Andy Barnes for allowing me to use their content in this remix.
Process¶
This project grew organically. I started building the setting using original footage. Since the original footage is a late-night news commentary, I needed a topic to talk about. That's when I thought to use this week's lesson text on Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons. This week's lesson referenced an early video work and thought that would work into the news highlights, which are typically used to emphasize the dialogue. I contacted both producers of content and asked permission to use their works.
Initially, I was going to do a live-action performance but ended up going in a different direction. I choose to use a screen reader. I copied the text into a note. Then I began rearranging and trimming down the text to fit neatly into the original footage. I then created the news captions in Illustrator and layered them into the original footage. I also layered in the highlight footage. The last thing was to add in the credits at the end.
At this point, it was complete, but inspiration hit again. I thought to change up more aspects of the original footage. I started masking up the title sequence with little details, name, class, etc. I was content keeping the original host in the frame and found it funny, but I decided to go a step further and place an image in their place. I thought about using an animated person took but not this time. I used Photoshop to outline and cut the image out of the original photo and layered them into Premiere. I then used keyframes to map the position, rotation, and scale of the image.
Time & Stretch¶
I initially spent 4 to 6 hours but then added 2 to 3 more hours on the second round of edits. Paying attention to the little details was this week's stretch, to get the fades, the transitions, and motions just right. Since this was a mini-thing I tried to keep things simple, but it got away from me. I'm learning I enjoy producing media.
Producing an animated character for this, or shooting live action would have been fun and could have been a different type of stretch. Maybe utilizing Adobe After Effects may have produced a better motion effect for the layered head image. I also feel the screen reader misses some voice inflections.
Tools¶
- SoundFlower
- macOS: VoiceOver
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Premiere Pro
Attributions¶
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
- Paul Zastrocky image/narrative Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons via INTE 5340
- Andy Barnes video Breaking Bad/Office via INTE 5340