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London-based Audiovisual remixers Addictive TV have used DVD turntable technology, originally tested by them for Pioneer, to create the first Hollywood sanctioned remix. New Line Cinema commissioned their audiovisual remix to promote its dance-centric movie Take The Lead.
Graham Daniels, co-founder of Addictive TV, cites Oscar Fischinger's experimental animations from the thirties as a huge inspiration and the EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network) in the late eighties as ‘early pioneers of the cut-up video and audiosampling’. But new digital technologies have fuelled a creative explosion.
DVJs can use the specially devised DVD turntable to manipulate DVD visuals in exactly the same way as they would music. So real-time digital video scratches, loops and instant cues are possible, while the video and audio streams always stay in perfect sync, even when they're being reserved and pitched. The unit works with all established CD formats as well as DVDs, crossing the boundaries between the once-separate audio and video domains.
Daniels describes their process: ‘We’re putting together things that coexist, we’re being inspired by seeing samples or potential visualisations of music and seeing that they do coexist perfectly and naturally, that’s our inspiration.’
This phenomenon has spawned the term ‘mashup’. EMI commissioned Addictive TV to create Blondie Vs The Doors, where original concert and video footage from two different sources have been ‘mashed’ together. This type of sampling is different in concept to their trailer for Take the Lead which, as Daniels describes, is ‘an audiovisual cutup, it’s a remix, like a film heavily audiovisually sampled and remixed. The technique is unexpected. If people see the trailer they’ll be in for a shock as they won’t see anything like that in the film.’
As people become aware of the appeal of audiovisual sampling, Addictive TV are experiencing a growing demand for their specialised knowledge of the medium. Daniels explains, ‘Our work is going on all the different platforms, we’ve made mobile ringtones for the Japanese, we’re talking to people in clubs, cinemas festivals, and plasma screen technology. I can see in another five to ten years it being quite standard for people to have thin plasmas on their wall at home with this kind of material playing 24 hours a day’.
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