Star Wars Is A Remix
from the everything-is-a-remix dept
A few months back, Kirby Ferguson started a fascinating project called Everything is a Remix, highlighting how the concept of "remixing" what came before, and adding additional new elements to it is much, much more common than you would think. The project kicked off late last summer with a video highlighting remix within music, focusing mainly on Led Zeppelin and how many, many of their songs are clearly "remixes" of existing songs:Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: culture, george lucas, remix, star wars
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 4th, 2011 @ 5:43pm
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I detect sarcasm in your tone, and I agree with that sarcasm, however, Lucas hardly did nothing. He took a bunch of movies, including Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress, and melded them together into a fantasy story in space. I cannot stand copyright maximalists beliefs that any copying is wrong, but what Lucas did was copying from many works, then sorting them into a decent story in another place and time from the originals (though Flash Gordon was in the same genre, unlike the Samurai movies.) We all copy, and it is what makes our individual works better. My question to the copyright maximalists is, and has always been, where in the sand is copying wrong...can we have a definitive line in the sand where everything before that line is constructive borrowing and everything past the line is evil copying. Sure, taking one movie and copying a significant amount of dialog and action works as grounds for me, but when you take bits and pieces from a spectrum of movies, it should be counted differently.
For the record though, I don't see a problem with someone borrowing a significant portion of a work to make it better (I welcome anyone to take my work and make it better, but then again I am a firm believer in open source,) but I suspect most copyright maximalists believe that any copying which results in padding their paycheck with more money if they win is bad copying (because they are sadistic greedy bastards.)
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Re: It's not really copying when you have to create everything from scratch.
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The purpose of the series is to point out that nothing is actually created "from scratch". Not at the level of ideas. Yes, Lucas had his own cameras and shot the scenes anew, but what was in his head came from other things that people had done before.
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HM
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Wat their Tweeter accounts hacked or faked, are those pics fake?
Wow! somebody got really busy trying to do a stunt.
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Wrong thread sorry.
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Pete Seeger and the folk process
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I don't think less of Star Wars
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Re: I don't think less of Star Wars
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Perhaps a dose of humility is what is required here.
"What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." (Isaac Newton)
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/sarc, for the loser copyrightmax shilltards who cant tell.
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ReMixing is not creating
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Re: ReMixing is not creating
So let's take, say, Final Fantasy VII - Voices fo the Lifestream. The fact that it uses original work and makes it, in some cases, better, can't just be because of the act of transformation? IT must be 'them durty pyrites.'
Lucas demands that people don't remix his works - this makes him look like a hypocrite, when someone points out his inspirations. Star Wars was a generic work taken to cunningly brilliant levels.
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Re: ReMixing is not creating
But if I set up some microphones and record a drummer playing the exact same drum-break and use that, then I HAVE done something original?
Well I'm sure you're just trolling there cos no one could actually be that stupid.
Originality in a work comes from the imaginative re-combination of existing ideas. The method of synthesis of the work is relevant only to the execution of the work, not the ideas that it is based on.
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Re: Re: ReMixing is not creating
If you sample a drum break off of a recording of someone elses work you are using someone ELSE'S work without their permission.
If you set up the drums and mics and record the same drum break, you are AT LEAST doing the work yourself and not mooching off someone elses efforts.
The problem most remix morons have is that they think that taking the work of someone else and just cut/pasting it into their work makes it theirs. They haven't put a damn bit of effort into any step of creating the sounds that were originally recorded, they just rip off the work that someone else did.
Lucus may have used all those scenes as references, but in no way did he "REMIX" them into Star Wars. All of the work to create the scenes in Star Wars was done my Lucas and his crew. The scenes look similar, but the work put into creating the scenes was done by Lucas.
This is the distinction between Remixing, and Recreating. Most of the examples used by little mikee are ambiguous, and are nothing more than angles and shots. The only real example little mikee grasps that holds water is the one with C3P0, that was Lucas might want to consider paying royalties on.
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Oh.. wait...
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However, if you try to pass them off as something other than your own work, you are not dealing with copyright issues anymore.
HM
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What's telling is he hasn't tried to imply that works based on samples have any less emotional impact, which of course is the goal. Those of us that are creative know the ends justify the means.
If I sample a Led Zeppelin riff off a CD, or if record myself playing it on my guitar, neither of these acts have created anything original. The originality comes from how I manipulate and rework said riff and combine it whatever other ideas I've chosen to use.
But then I guess I stand corrected, some people really are that stupid.
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Re: Re: Re: ReMixing is not creating
There’s a name for using existing components and not expending resources to recreate what’s already there; it’s called efficiency and it’s worked really well for us humans.
“The problem most remix morons have is that they think that taking the work of someone else and just cut/pasting it into their work makes it theirs. They haven't put a damn bit of effort into any step of creating the sounds that were originally recorded, they just rip off the work that someone else did.”
You left out the part about combining those pieces in a creative way. That’s an important part.
Lucus may have used all those scenes as references, but in no way did he "REMIX" them into Star Wars. There, I agree with you. As Herodotus (the younger) said:
“Remixing something is a very specific process. It involves, not only ideas, but recordings of actual realizations of those ideas. It is quite distinct from emulation or artistic influence, whether conscious or unintentional, neither of which involve actual recordings as raw material.”
I see the utility of maintaining a more specific definition of remix.
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Re: ReMixing is not creating
Watch this and then come back to tell us it's not creative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYa7furgQsA
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HM
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HM
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Besides, if I remember correctly a camel was one of the greatest mathematicians ever :-)
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The more your work is made up of elements actually created by others, the less creative I consider your work.
Doesn't mean it's not funny or poignant or whatever. Just that much less originally creative.
HM
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HM
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HM
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And if Star Wars is a remix, point me to something that was made previously that is just like it and I'll enjoy as much.
Little homages and nods to the creator's favorites do not qualify as a remix...
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Happens all the time here.
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"Remix" does not mean the same thing as "copy".
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Every joke is like that also
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Re: Every joke is like that also
I've got good news and bad news. First the good news:
I've got him down to ten, the bad news: adultery is still in.
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Not only Carpenter but also Kurosawa
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Remix society is the society of using what was already done and piecing it together. Nothing new is created, except the collage.
Influence requires that you create from scratch. You hire the actors, you write the story, you shoot the material.
You can be influenced by something without replicating. Remixing is just replicating. Not the same thing.
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Your argument is essentially "nothing can ever be more than the sum of its parts", which is provably false.
If you insist on your claim that "nothing new is created", then using the same logic, it's possible to prove that nothing new is *ever* created, because every song is simply made up of notes that have been played before.
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Of course, clearly that's not even slightly original or creative since all he was doing was using the work of others directly without drawing his own...... It's just a remix of other people's hard work, right?
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Way to bury the lead there, dude. “Nothing new is created, except for the thing created.” What an elegant Zen statement. If Michelangelo takes a block of marble and some tools and carves a statue of David, nothing new is created. Except the statue. If you take some pieces of broken glass and make a mosaic, you haven’t created anything (except the mosaic). If you’re intention is to say that the creation is of lesser value, I can’t argue with a subjective valuation. I would just point out that even you admit that something is created.
“You can be influenced by something without replicating. Remixing is just replicating. Not the same thing.”
Copying is just replicating. When you do something to change the form, meaning, and context of an existing work, "That's Aremix!"
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amen
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Remixing something is a very specific process. It involves, not only ideas, but recordings of actual realizations of those ideas. It is quite distinct from emulation or artistic influence, whether conscious or unintentional, neither of which involve actual recordings as raw material.
This isn't said to denigrate remixes at the expense of traditional musical practices. It is simply a definition. I have nothing against remixing as a technique. I have heard DJ Shadow do things that are more musically interesting, and genuinely original, than the output of the vast majority of current singer-songwriters. But by referring to all of these different artistic relationships as 'remixing', important distinctions are lost.
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Star Wars
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Art is in presentation.
And to the one who mentioned Shakespeare, his themes weren't original either. He borrowed from Greet tragedies and comedies, and of course, history.
Most art is in the presentation, not the subject. I wouldn't call two artist's paintings of the same subject a "remix."
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Star Wars is not really a remix
In fact, it's an excellent example of the difference between ideas and expression. George Lucas, I think, has always been very up-front about having borrowed concepts from earlier works. He wanted the feel of old Flash Gordon serials, as well as material based on various myths, with some cowboy westerns and WWII moves thrown in. Well, he did his own versions of all of that. As far as I know, there's not a single frame of Star Wars that is copied from any other movie. Lucas did it all himself. So, he copied a bunch of ideas, but the expressions of those ideas were all arguably original.
This is quite different from the stereotypical remix, which (as the definition recited at the beginning of the video states) actually copies pre-existing works but adds (arguably) some level of creativity in re-arranging them and/or incorporating them with new/other material.
HM
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Re: Star Wars is not really a remix
Yeah, I'm sort of agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. I'm not convinced that 'remix' was used properly in this article.
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nothing new in the world
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