Power Rangers Remix Project

For this Remix Assignment I took a clip from a Power Ranger episode and mocked the idea of the influence weapons and violence have on children by watching children’s shows. The original clip showed two average teens who suddenly became super heroes (power rangers) and were learning how to use their new powers. In one scene one the male characters shoots his gun off and nearly misses his friends head, this caught my eye and I decided to put a clip of a real life news report of a little boy who accidently picked up a gun at home ad shot his sister in the mouth. Portraying real life situations and making fun of the ignorance in these shows seems very beneficial and it brought a lot of knowledge to me. I believe after doing this project that there should be more attention and light on this subject for they are very dangerous and these children’s shows are not always teaching the lessons we think.

Cassidy Rey Power Rangers Remix by Cassidy Rey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Based on a work at http://cassidyrey.com.

Oliver Brown Remix Assignment

For this remix, I turned to the NFL speechless ads about domestic violence and decided to add some other clips to make the message completely different. In adding huge hits from NFL games and an image from USA Football about concussion awareness, this remix quickly changes meaning. The sequence of clips portrays a message about raising awareness for player safety and concussion awareness. Ultimately, I found this experience difficult. It was hard to find a way to remix around an ad which originally served as a PSA for domestic violence. The only message that should be displayed about domestic violence is that it is terrible and should never happen. Therefore, in order to remix around the subject matter, i had to change the meaning of the ad entirely. In the end, I'm happy with the way the video turned out and really enjoyed working with video editing software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcQG4OpVhdE&feature=youtu.be

NFL speechless REMIX by Oliver Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Remix Defense Assignment

Remix Defense Assignment (100 pts): You have been charged with Intellectual Property Violation regarding your earlier remix project. Prepare a defense (250-500 words) for your case and submit it to Canvas (we will talk about it as a large group in class). To build your argument, look to the points made in “RIP: Remix Manifesto” and any of Lessig’s TED talks that talk about the current copyright laws as well as Tim Wu's writing on Fair Use, and the applicability (or lack thereof) of the laws in relation to the digital public sphere.

Due Wed March 4th by the start of class

Remix Manifesto Debrief

• Manifesto
• Culture always builds on the past
• i.e. folk culture
• The past always tries to control the future
• recording industry, copyright
• Our future is becoming less free 
• do you agree?
• To build free societies you must limit the control of the past
• is doing remix an act of activism?

“It’s part of evolution” - how does this relate to our study of memes?

• “We have a mouse disease” 

Why is a critical take on capitalism important to this issue?

• What used to be free culture is now used as a means for corporations to make a profit - everything can be commodified in a society ruled by the “free” market
• Culture Jamming - corporations don’t ask us if we want to hear their pitches, why should we ask them?
• Culture jamming (sometimes guerrilla communication) is a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including (but not limited to) corporate advertising. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of a mass society to foster progressive change. Culture jamming is a form of subvertising. Many culture jams are intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture. Tactics include re-figuring logos; fashion statements; and product images as a means to challenge the idea of "what's cool." Culture jamming often entails using mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, commonly using the original medium's communication method."

• http://www.gimp.org/ - Open source Photoshop alternative

Visual Tutorial: Ripping YouTube Videos and Posting with Creative Commons License

Part I: Ripping YouTube Videos

• Start in Mozilla Firefox browser
• From the Menu, select Tools > Add Ons

• On the left-hand tab, select "Get Add Ons" then search "Flash Video Downloader" in the upper-right-hand search bar (you can also search "YouTube Downloader" which will give you different results but most of them work just fine).

For the Extension/Add-On that I use and like, go to the bottom of your search results and click "see all 394 results"

• The first result in the new window will be "Flash Video Downloader" (with a blue arrow) - click on "Add to Firefox" then select "Install" when a window pops up to prompt you

• Restart Firefox
• Once you've restarted the browser, when you go to YouTube you will see a blue arrow to the right of the URL window. Click on this when you've visited a particular video's page and you will see various options for file types to download. *Note: you may want to  always select "Low" versions of mp4s to be safe and not take up too much space on your computer.

Part Two - Selecting/Posting a Creative Commons License

• Visit Creative Commons - About the Licenses
• Read about the various licenses, what viewers are allowed to do with each license and decide which one you prefer

• Go to Licenses > Choose a License

• Fill in the two left boxes with your preferences for what you will allow audiences to do with your work (adaptations means people can remix your work, commercial use means people can use your work/adaptations of your work for profit)

• Copy the code in the bottom-right box 

• Go to Blogger.com > select "Communication in the Digital Age" from your blogs (this will only work if you accepted my invitation to contribute to the blog -- if you can't get permission to contribute to the blog, simply email me your link and the code for your license and I will post it for you)

• Select "New Post" - the orange button in the top left

• Select the "HTML" button that is in the upper left corner

• Once you've posted the link/embed code to your media, paste the code for the creative commons license AFTER the link:

• Once you tab back to "compose" in the top left, you will see the CC License

• Hit "Publish" -- You may give your brief (100 word) reflection on the experience either within the post, in a comment, or on Canvas. Then you're done!

Remix Best Practices

• Use of cultural icons 
• Referencing original
• Production value (high/low)
• Don't need expensive software
• Prominent figure
• Short
• Animals - relates to wide audience
• Syncing of different media elements
• Importance of good editing
• Funny/humorous
• Low production value - relatable/attainable
• Stupid/smart
• Element of surprise
• Puns
• Mocking
• Especially prominent figures
• Incongruity
• Recontextualizing
• Establishes ingroup/outgroup through the media references
• Timely (reflects current events)
• Speaks to a specific audience

Remix Assigment

Remix Assignment (100 pts): Create an original expression of ideas/feelings/beliefs using appropriated piece(s) of media - this can be songs, videos, images, text, etc. We will go over open-source tools for creating re-appropriated media in class, as well as ways to create and link to your remix’s web presence. Register with Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/choose/) to license your and allow adaptations of your work to be shared. Post, embed, and link to the class blog along with a description of: your remix’s original media content, the unique perspective that you have added to it/them, and the creative process of remixing that you underwent to produce it.

Rubric

• Topic is relevant to student's Final Project Proposal (20 pts)
• Critical message is both present and understandable from the media without further explanation (20 pts)
• Creativity/Style (20 pts)
• Student used the re-appropriated materials to say something new (i.e. unique from the message of the original content) (20 pts)
• Publicly posted, Creative Commons Licensed, Brief Explanation given (20 pts)

TOTAL = 100 pts