My project took a 1964 family movie, Mary Poppins, and twisted it into a trailer for a horror film. The process of remixing genres has taught me a lot about how each genre sticks to a specific kind of template in order to generate their tone. Additionally, I developed great respect for editors, as they hold a large portion of the responsibility for how a piece of media will be understood. Finally, it was most fascinating to explore how material can be manipulated to convey a meaning drastically different from its intended use.
While this project has been a lighthearted play on bending genres in unexpected ways, it brings about the serious cause that Brett Gaylor discusses in his movie Rip!: A Remix Manifesto. He reads his manifesto as: 1. Culture always builds on the past 2. The past always tries to control the future 3. Our future is becoming less free 4. To build free societies you must limit the control of the past. His argument is that culture builds off the progress made by culture before it, and when that ability to do so is inhibited, the past puts a limit on the progress of the future. He warns of the dangers to creativity and the development of culture that come from copyright laws today, and advocates for the free flow of media. In the case of my project, the movie I used to remake into a horror trailer was copyrighted and not available for legal remixing, an example of the past controlling the future. While the production of my video may seem like a silly pastime for entertainment, the concept of exploring genre could be an essential practice for those going into filmmaking and editing, and the laws surrounding the rights to most movies would not allow for this.