‘What Would Buffy Do?’ Essay Wins Mr. Pointy Award

I just received the exciting news that an essay I wrote entitled “‘What Would Buffy Do?’: Notes on Dusting Edward Cullen” has won the Short Mr. Pointy Award at the fourth biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses at Flagler College in St. Augustine Florida. The “Mr. Pointy” Awards are presented to the best scholarly works in Whedon Studies. The honors are given out in two categories affectionately titled the Long Mr. Pointy and the Short Mr. Pointy awards. The winners were chosen by vote of the Whedon Studies Association and I am honored to have been nominated and floored to have won this year.

I originally wrote the piece for the blog Women in Media and News: Voices as a way of detailing the reasons and process behind making my viral remix video Buffy vs Edward. Many thanks to Jennifer Pozner at WIMN for her fantastic editing notes on the essay.

Buffy vs Edward Nominated for Webby Award

I’m excited to announce that my Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed video has just been nominated for a 2010 Webby Award in the Best Remix/Mashup category! Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honor” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is one of the leading international awards honoring excellence on the Internets.

Since its online debut last summer “Buffy vs Edward” has been viewed nearly 3 million times and has been translated into 30 different languages by fans (including Japanese, Bahasa Indonesia, Haitian Creole and Tagalog). The remix was created by methodically re-editing and re-combining clips from the Twilight movie with scenes from 36 different television episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And just for fun I thought I’d share the most recent video response to “Buffy vs Edward” on YouTube. It’s a music video by Armoured Bearcub called “In Which Buffy Slays Edward”. My favorite line from their song – “Only when Edward calls Bella his drug is she any sort of heroine!”

Remix by Lawrence Lessig

So I finally downloaded the free PDF of Lawrence Lessig’s book “Remix” from the internet archive, something I had been meaning to do ever since his interview on the Colbert Report which lead to a series of remix videos. I was surprised and excited to find that he talks about one of my remixed commercials poking fun at the fox news channel. Here is an excerpt:

My favorites among the remixes I’ve seen are all cases in which the mix delivers a message more powerfully than any original alone could, and certainly more than words alone could. For example, a remix by Jonathan McIntosh begins with a scene from The Matrix, in which Agent Smith asks, “Do you ever get the feeling you’re living in a virtual reality dream world? Fabricated to enslave your mind?” The scene then fades to a series of unbelievable war images from the Fox News Channel— a news organization that arguably makes people less aware of the facts than they were before watching it. Toward the end, the standard announcer voice says, “But there is another sound: the sound of good will.” On the screen is an image of Geraldo Rivera, somewhere in Afghanistan. For about four seconds, he stands there silently, with the wind rushing in the background. (I can always measure the quickness of my audience by how long it takes for people to get the joke: “the sound of good will” = silence). The clip closes with a fast series of cuts to more Fox images, and then a final clip from an ad for the fi lm that opened McIntosh’s remix: “The Matrix Has You.” – Remix by Lawrence Lessig (page 71)

Here is the original remix I made back in 2003.

Reel Grrls Workshop: Gendered Ads Remixed

Over the past few years I have been developing a series of fun workshops that use simple video remixing projects as an engaging way to teach critical media literacy to youth. Back in December I taught one of these workshops with the Reel Grrls – a Seattle based non-profit that aims to empower girls to critique media images and to create their own films. As both a fun introduction to the remixing process and also as a form of creative media literacy I gave participants the assignment of switching the video and audio from Saturday morning cartoon toy commercials aimed specifically at boys with those aimed at girls. The resulting juxtapositions provided hilarious and insightful commentary on the way the advertising industry manipulates gender roles and helps develop gendered socialization in children.

Embedded above  are remixed ads by Reel Grrls Sahar & Diana – also make sure to check out Julia & Caitlin’s remix ads, Gwyn & Emma’s remix and Mari’s remix. I had a lot of fun teaching this workshop and was definitely inspired by the Reel Grrls media making talent, skill and creative energy.

Remixing Pop Culture Event in LA at CSUN

I will be presenting the Political Remix Video portion of the Remixing Pop Culture event on Thursday March 25, 12:30pm at California State University, Northridge in LA.  Together with vidders Julie Levin Russo and Alexis Lothian, we will be screening some of the most intriguing remix videos & fan vids that subvert traditional gender and sexuality norms. The program will be followed by a Q&A with all the curators. The event is hosted by Anita Sarkeesian of FeministFrequency.com (Special thanks to Laura Shapiro for consulting).  Check out the facebook event page for all the details!

NPR Piece on Fair Use and Buffy vs Edward

Last month while speaking at the World’s Fair Use Day in Washington DC I was interviewed for this NPR radio piece about fair-use and remix. They get bonus points in my book for mentioning that Buffy vs Edward is a pro-feminist critique of the Twilight franchise – Plus NPR reporter Joel Rose takes advantage of fair-use himself and uses my remixed audio clip of Buffy dusting Edward for the end of his segment.

Here is a direct link to the NPR radio story with transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123684026

Remix Goes Mainstream Panel at SxSW 2010

This March I will be speaking on a panel at SxSW entitled Remix Goes Mainstream: Making Mashups Pay. The South by Southwest media festival happens every year in Austin Texas and I’m excited to be a part of it this time around. The Making Mashups Pay panel is scheduled for Sunday, March 14 at 3:30pm – it should prove to be an interesting and lively conversation moderated by Patricia Aufderheide from the Center for Social Media. I will be focusing my comments on some of the more indirect benefits I get from my video remixing projects as opposed to any direct monetary gain like ad revenue which I do not get from of my work.

Below is the official SxSW panel description:

Remix, mashup, compilation, clip job, footage art: it’s what doc filmmakers and online video artists do from 102 Minutes that Changed America to Moral Kombat to Los Angeles Plays Itself to Buffy v. Edward. But how do they make money, get distribution and stay legal?

Total Recut Interview on Buffy vs Edward

A couple weeks ago I was interviewed via skype by video mash-up artist ikat381 for the remixing website Total Recut. We discussed my Buffy vs Edward remix, the importance and influence of fannish vidding and the greater cultural value of remix video. I’m cross posting the full interview below – here is a link to the original post on Total Recut.

Total Recut: What did you want to accomplish with Buffy vs Edward?

Jonathan McIntosh: I wanted to create a remix dealing with the subtleties of gender and romance in mainstream media, not an easy task in mash-up form. I had seen the Twilight movie and I read the first couple of books and I was horrified by the fact that the Twilight series takes all the progress in gender roles and reverts it back at least 200 years. My goal was to show Edward Cullen’s controlling and overprotective behaviour for what it is, and to do that in a sort of funny way, and to have that done by a strong female character from a different series. I thought one of the best ways to do that would be to have Buffy the Vampire Slayer meet him. Juxtaposing these two characters highlights how backwards the Twilight series is in terms of gender, really how anti-feminist it is. That was the goal: to make it funny but also highlight the patriarchal nature and stalkeriness of Edward.

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Speaking at the 1st World’s Fair Use Day

I have been invited to speak on a panel about my remix video work at the first annual World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD) in Washington DC on January 12, 2010. It’s an event put together by the public interest group Public Knowledge which works to defend all of our rights in the emerging digital culture. The WFUD is a free, all-day celebration of fair use: the legal right that allows innovators and creators to make particular uses of copyrighted materials. It will be focused on highlighting new and innovative uses of existing content; provide the perspectives of artists, policymakers, academics and business innovators; and teach you how fair use can enrich your creative work. The event is free and open to the public so check out the WFUD site for RSVP info.

Remixing Workshop with Reel Grrls

I’m excited to be leading a workshop on video remixing at Reel Grrls in Seattle Washington on December 9th. Reel Grrls is an after-school media & technology training program that empowers girls to critique media images and to gain media technology skills – in short it’s a very cool organization! We will be screening and discussing a series of remix videos that deal with issues of gender. Plus we’ll also be learning the software tools and technical process involved in creating new remix works in class.

Check out the Reel Grrls YouTube Channel to see some of their fantastic videos!