Furious Footage

In this production I had to make up a scratch video, which is by using old footage. The footage that I found was on youtube and archive sites. The idea behind this was that the quality of the footage would be awful to make it look as though this footage had been reused. The way in which I did that was by downloading the footage in the small amount of MB possible, this meant that the footage was unclear and blurry... exactly what I wanted.

Scratch video was a British video art movement that emerged in the early to mid-1980s. It was characterised by the use of found footage, fast cutting and multi-layered rhythms. Scratch video arose in opposition to broadcast TV, as (anti-)artists attempted to deal critically and directly with the impact of mass communications. Much of the work was politically radical, often containing images of a sexual or violent nature, and using images appropriated from mainstream media. Two very famous scratch video artists Rik Lander and Peter Boyd MaClean, who are also known as the 'Duvet Brothers.' This is their most famous video. This video gave me a lot of inspiration as to what mine should be about. 

How would you describe a scratch video...

'If television is our shop window on the world, starch has just chucked a brick through it, and is busy looting 30 years of goodies with abandon' - Andy Lipman, City Limits, 5th October 1984 

'Scratch video establishes a radical new approach to television itself. It abandons the idea that TV images are mere representations of what’s real. It starts to disassemble the images themselves by indulging in orgies of editing. In a sense scratch is the epitome of what professional broadcasters would call irresponsible television.' - Benjamin Woolley, The Listener, 14th Sept 1986

Both of these quotes are amazing definitions as to what a scratch video is, I particularly like the second quote because it's true. These videos are going against what editors have been doing for years and it's for this reason why they have turned out brilliant. I really like the concept of them because I think it's a good way to express your opinion without using any words.

In my production I based mine upon feminism; past and present. I used protests from over 30 years ago, to protests that have happened in the past 10 years. Along with that I used present feminists such as celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and girl group Guns N Hoses. In the video I also used the feminist version of Robin Thicke' blurred lines music video. I felt as though this video was incredibly important to use because it became very popular for current feminists because it showed the world just what feminism was about. I chose to do feminism because it's something that really intrigues me because I feel as though society as a whole doesn't necessarily understand it.

I used a total of 8 or 9 clips I then cut the clips down to the shot that I wanted. These clips were about 5 seconds long, I then cut them in half again so I could use each part but put them in a different order, to show that it had been edited thoroughly. I really enjoyed edited this although it did take a lot of effort to get all of the clips in the 1 minute that I had. The song that I used was 'Girl on Fire' by Alicia Keys, I felt as though it was very important to have a female vocal especially when my video was about the strength of women. For this video I turned it into black and white, the reason for this is because a lot of scratch videos are black and white, I also did this because some of the clips were in colour while some weren't therefore I thought that it would suit it better.

I think that scratch videos are really great and I enjoyed making mine especially when it's on a subject that fascinates you.

Here is my video 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_video - 4th March 2014