Wonkavision presents: Large Hadron Collider

My first thought for a Large Hadron Collider mashup was apocalyptic, but as I started work on it I realized I didn’t want to unnecessarily scare myself or others. A reference to particles somehow triggered an odd memory in my head: the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where Mike Teavee can’t resist shooting himself in Wonkavision.

With Wonkavision and the Hadron Collider as my starting point, I put together the above mashup, which includes a bit of Stephen Hawking and music from the There Will Be Blood score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

Yours truly makes Google News

I suppose it’s a bit lame to get excited about, but for the first time (that I’m aware of) yours truly hit the Google News homepage. Granted, it was in my local Ann Arbor section, but still!

Michael Moore came to town Thursday night for the world premiere of his latest movie, Slacker Uprising. The Ann Arbor News initially contacted me about shooting live video, but when the internet connection proved tenuous, I simply recorded and edited. I was planning on sticking around and watching the film, but after his press conference ran late and his lecture lasted nearly 90 minutes, I had to get back to the office to edit while the film played.

Anyway, I had a lot of video on my hands. I provided the Ann Arbor News with press conference video late Thursday night and then edited the lecture Friday morning, wrote up a quick description of a few clips and posted them on MLive’s Elections page.

Unfortunately, our design guy who provides us with uniform title slides wasn’t in Friday, so I had to use simple, generic titles.

For your viewing pleasure:

Press conference clips: Michael Moore debuts ‘Slacker Uprising’ before a packed house at the Michigan Theater

Lecture clip one: Michael Moore delivers ‘modest proposals for President Obama’ at film premiere

Lecture clip two and three:
More from Moore: Director, activist talks Sarah Palin, lender bailout

Mashup on mashup: Filipino prisoners get dirty to Brittney, Mike Jones

Continuing with the theme of popular Youtube clips mashed up with hot tracks, my latest video features a mashup of a mashup (just waiting to be mashed up again). The source material is solid gold on both fronts: Several hundred Filipino prisoners shake it in mass synchronization, and mashup DJ Diplo (here operating with DJ Low Budget as Hollertronix) pairs a Brittney Spears track with Mike Jones rhymes.

I slow the clip down occasionally to match the tempo of the track, but as with Indian Thriller Drives too Fast, the best moments are left to chance.

Indian Thriller Drives too Fast

My latest and most fun mashup, featuring footage from Youtube phenomenon Indian Thriller and audio from “My Friend Dario” by Vitalic.  I slowed down the video in only a couple of places.  Most of the syncing is incidental.

This mashup was inspired by a somewhat lame past-time of mine: watching funny music videos on Youtube while listening to my own music.  The results are often quite magical, as I think you’ll see below.

John McCain is Grizzly Man

This is one of my first video mashup projects.  Like many of my early mashups, this clip features narration by my favorite heavily-accented German filmmaker, Werner Herzog.  Basically, I slowed down several clips of presidential candidate John McCain and plopped audio from Herzog’s Grizzly Man over top.  It’s not meant to be political, just odd.  The ending actually turned out to be quite haunting and funny.