Yesterday, we showed you Johnny Quest and Dutch Newman's excellent found-footage video for "Sweet." Today, we've listed five videos that appropriate all different kinds of found footage: news reels, government documentation and stock images. Check out some prime examples after the jump.
Boards of Canada: "Dayvan Cowboy"
This video from director Melisa Olson is about as simple as it gets, stitching together NASA footage of Joseph Kittinger's insane high-altitude parachute jumps for Project Excelsior and gorgeous footage of surfer Laird Hamilton riding waves. The narrative is thin, but there is one, by way of Olson's simple juxtaposition. A figure drops from the fucking stratosphere into the ocean, and another emerges gracefully riding a giant shoulder of water. I'm not sure what a Dayvan Cowboy is, but either one of these two fits the title.
Ratatat: "Drugs"
For electronic music duo Ratatat's "Drugs," a choice cut from LP4, director Carl Burgess scored some primo B-roll and stock footage from image agency Getty. Everything about the video is perverse and disturbing, yet it only features people blindly smiling or turning toward the camera and smiling or crying. I'm not sure what Getty originally intended these creepy-ass fake images for, but Burgess exploits them to great effect, editing and synchronizing them to Ratatat's spastic song. If we can take the title as a hint, the story of "Drugs" seems to show the heightened happiness and the eventual comedown that come with drug usage.
Rage Against the Machine: "Testify"
Even though Rage was a defiantly political band, the politics and causes could wear thin -- especially when they took on such easy targets as George Bush, Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, etc., as they do in this clip created during the 2000 election season. Comparing Bush with a monkey? Yup. Got it. What is great about this music video, though, is how it captures the absurdities of the American '90s, using not only news clips of these cultural figures and politicians but also clips of people literally rolling around in money. Though it isn't a pure found-footage video -- the band's performance of the song is intercut throughout the piece -- "Testify" demonstrates the power of appropriating newsreels and stock images for political expression.
Theophilius London: "You Got the Love"
I can't think of any song from last year that received as many quality remixes as Florence and the Machine's "You Got the Love." The song has been treated so well that Brooklyn-based rapper and producer Theophilius London remixed a remix of the song done by British band, the xx. Appropriately, the video for London's track, which is an interpretation of an interpretation, uses footage from the torch ceremony of the 1996 Olympics. The jubilant faces, the cool rhythm of runners, the whole spectacle and celebration of it all makes for one hell of a positive video, only undercut slightly at the end by a proud and puffy-faced Bill Clinton.
You Got The Love from Theophilus London on Vimeo.
Rufio of the Jedi: Chipped Nail Polish
For local Bear Clubber Jamaal Rashad's video of "Chipped Nail Polish" off his free (and excellent) WOMYN Mixtape, he snipped a particularly choice clip from Korean vampire movie Thirst. The uncomfortable and disturbing scene is played out as Rufio raps about "pretty ladies," being held close, applesauce, etc., in a disjointed, slightly auto-tuned delivery. The occasional superimposed snippet of lyrics and the creepy subtitles from the original footage give the video a dark sense of humor.
Comments (0)