A completely renegade way of making a film, Remix Experiment takes a plethora of pre-existing footage and weaves it together to create a surreal new filmic experience. Part Music , Part Film.. standing on the shoulders of over a hundred years of archiveal brilliance.
Considering Benjamin Walsh has been making music his enitre career, and scored many films and projects, this is a step towards a new art dicipline. His love of cinema and cinema score , leads him down a new pathway where he creates his own visual concepts from the ground up with no limitations or boundaries for his imagination.
Mirroring, Hip Hop and Electronic music techniques, the world of Sample Culture is very common in music. If you go back to the DADA and futurist movement, "collage" and "cut and paste" techniques were radical in their day and shocked the entire world of art at the time. Nowdays we have a world that constantly references/revisits varied era's styles and content, It's the new normal.
This film is created using fragments of our world, referencing centuries of image and sound
Also creating an equal amount of fresh content and brand new score elements, which ties these randomly selected fragments
together into a timeline that connects...it's a tapestry of cinematic gems.
To learn more about the process of creation in the worlds of Director and composer Benjamin Walsh
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
This adventurous film is a process of 3 years, started during the global pandemic. It is compiled of many different types of sound and footage that has been archived over the last century and in this way it makes the process of this motion picture film different to most other films I've seen. I have carefully selected the most incredible images and sounds that are in the creative common domain, to recontextualize & form my abstract narrative..Its the world of Remix Experiment! Where vintage cars drive inside the valleys of a record, escaping a monster needle..An entire island exists inside a piano which plays itself, A place where wires connect timelines and vintage lenses of yesteryear shine a light on the modern processes of cutting-edge technology of today. It's a Dream, or Vision of a character who's played by myself
Its a etherial, abstract, adventure, style-ride, woven around a heavily focused score.
This film is about technology and our relationship to it as humans, particularly how format has evolved and how we are constantly capturing and bottleing out art and our ideas, every decade, on a completely new form of media.
If this abstract, dream like film had to be about anything it would be about IMAGINATION and how over the course of the years the story may have changed but the size of our dreams have not. Our species always expand humanity with ideas better way bigger than our capability.
In this current climate of the world it can seem for some of late like there are so many hurdles and so many negative aspects.
Being stuck at home in lockdown in Australia over the last 2 years, this film Is me dreaming my way out into a world that I want to wake up in and I hope other people will watch it and feel inspired and positive by focusing on the most beautiful parts of humanity which ,in my opinion, are the parts of us that dream and imagine greater things and possibilities then we can foresee.
The reason why I have taken to moving image and upskilled my last two years is because I have been cut off from the world that I knew which was touring internationally as a musician and an interacting with people all over the world. Through the world of film I can actually travel and land anywhere across the world, appear in festivals homes virtually ... this is why I've chosen to expand my creative talents to create a film.
WHAT DOES THE NAME MEAN?
A few years back I released an album entitled "REMIX EXPERIMENT "and that was created with cutting-edge modern technology It was also a creative philosophy ..I have utilised this technology as a strong foundation for the soundtrack of the film.
I've had the pleasure to score for many productions, and there's always limitations from the directors and the owners of the content, there's permissions and copyright limits, and that's what's wonderful about directing my own feature film is that boundary dissolves and suddenly on a visual sense and a musical sonic sense, I can have the freedom to move him direction as my heart sees fit. There is so much incredible film imagery and music that has been made over the last century that we actually seen a huge amount of footage and music return back into humanity as creative common( copyright free). By learning from the speical fx shots and visual narrative of old filmmaking techniques and also hearing the melodies and rhythmic structures of music created in the 1800s ,I'm learning. Through the art of the past. From distant elders that I've never met and by connecting with this material I'm helping to keep this material seen and heard. sampling and recontextualizing art may seem strange to some, it's always been contentious....but.. on the flip side of that, there is an incredible collaboration that outlives the mortality of humans. And we see an abstract historial depiction of the birth of cinema and sound.
I'm excited to bring back to life these hidden gems and help to re tell some of their story to new audiences. In this day and age in an internet connected world, where everyone has screen 24/7 in their pocket, to look at the beginnings of phonographs, tape cassette players wire recorders, record industry boom ,cathode tubes & the invention of television, satellites, microprocessors ..
The dream of capturing image and sound in it's embryonic form, from nothing NOW inside an exponetial technology explosion, is in itself an incredibly worthwhile endeavour. I can imagine someone younger watching this film and discovering a whole range of knowledge that they didn't accept before about the story of how we capture art and the incredible imagination, tenacity, scientific endeavours and achievements it took to get to where we are now. Looking at imagination and dreams in this way gives you hope the best parts of us as humans can overcome and propel us out of the worst pitfalls and scenarios.
HOW DO YOU MAKE A FILM ALONE IN A PANDEMIC?
Obviously this is been a fantasticly practical way to make a film without having a soundstage camera crew ,makeup crew, assistant directors, lighting designers ,sound recordist, catering team it would be completely impossible for me to pull this off! let alone from
confines of my home in Australia. By remixing this old footage I've been able to input this incredible array of action and drama and suspense into the plot of my film, where I can drive and crash a vintage car, travel through the sky in a hot air balloon, be taken aboard a 1950s style sci-fi Martian spacecraft. Many of the sets, actors, props and narration is all sampled from a wonderful array of archival footage. I also get a chance to write a score and hopefully when the times right, perform it globally, something many film directors could not enjoy, The live performance of their film. I'm wearing a lot of hats during this process obviously as a cinematographer, director, screenwriter, composer & editor it's a huge undertaking but to be fair I would be lying saying that I have to create the enire content alone, I'm just digging and digging through footage and finding acres of inspiration. If I can raise some coin I'd love to be able to expand to work with others. But for now its working just fine..I'm up for the challenge
My vitual film crew have too many names to mention... I've got no access to the names of the crews for most of this stuff...
WHEN WILL IT BE FINISHED?
Depending on finacial support.. in roughly 7 months away. The way I've decided to complete the task of making this film is by pre-selling tickets to the people that would have seen me perform over the last 25 years internationally. They would know me through my work with Circus & Theatre through music shows through festivals through art centres and of course online! I'm asking support by simply purchasing a ticket. There's a lot of crowdfunding sources and a lot of online platforms in which to raise money. I've decided to not go through those avenues.. I'm using Humanitix, they are a fantastic not for profit organisation.
People that want to add extra level of support apart from the ticket price will be credited at the end of my film, in terms of their name listed as a supporter. IF! all things go to plan its out November..
ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT IT WILL IT ALL COME TOGETHER IN THE END?
Yes.. But it won't be easy..but of course, if there is anything that I have learned by watching all this footage..It's that there are no excuses!
It is a very difficult time to know what to do as an artist it's a very difficult time to ask people going through such incredible hardships and obstacles in their own life...but who hasn't through time!
It's my job to continue to create phenomenal artwork amidst war, admist pandemics & environmental catastrophes.. that's my job as an artist ..and I feel now more than ever is a great time to spread something artistically beautiful, full of rich imagination and hope and inspire the people around me to continue on the path. And like generations before us, Dream their way forward untill it happens.
Considering Benjamin Walsh has been making music his enitre career, and scored many films and projects, this is a step towards a new art dicipline. His love of cinema and cinema score , leads him down a new pathway where he creates his own visual concepts from the ground up with no limitations or boundaries for his imagination.
Mirroring, Hip Hop and Electronic music techniques, the world of Sample Culture is very common in music. If you go back to the DADA and futurist movement, "collage" and "cut and paste" techniques were radical in their day and shocked the entire world of art at the time. Nowdays we have a world that constantly references/revisits varied era's styles and content, It's the new normal.
This film is created using fragments of our world, referencing centuries of image and sound
Also creating an equal amount of fresh content and brand new score elements, which ties these randomly selected fragments
together into a timeline that connects...it's a tapestry of cinematic gems.
To learn more about the process of creation in the worlds of Director and composer Benjamin Walsh
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
This adventurous film is a process of 3 years, started during the global pandemic. It is compiled of many different types of sound and footage that has been archived over the last century and in this way it makes the process of this motion picture film different to most other films I've seen. I have carefully selected the most incredible images and sounds that are in the creative common domain, to recontextualize & form my abstract narrative..Its the world of Remix Experiment! Where vintage cars drive inside the valleys of a record, escaping a monster needle..An entire island exists inside a piano which plays itself, A place where wires connect timelines and vintage lenses of yesteryear shine a light on the modern processes of cutting-edge technology of today. It's a Dream, or Vision of a character who's played by myself
Its a etherial, abstract, adventure, style-ride, woven around a heavily focused score.
This film is about technology and our relationship to it as humans, particularly how format has evolved and how we are constantly capturing and bottleing out art and our ideas, every decade, on a completely new form of media.
If this abstract, dream like film had to be about anything it would be about IMAGINATION and how over the course of the years the story may have changed but the size of our dreams have not. Our species always expand humanity with ideas better way bigger than our capability.
In this current climate of the world it can seem for some of late like there are so many hurdles and so many negative aspects.
Being stuck at home in lockdown in Australia over the last 2 years, this film Is me dreaming my way out into a world that I want to wake up in and I hope other people will watch it and feel inspired and positive by focusing on the most beautiful parts of humanity which ,in my opinion, are the parts of us that dream and imagine greater things and possibilities then we can foresee.
The reason why I have taken to moving image and upskilled my last two years is because I have been cut off from the world that I knew which was touring internationally as a musician and an interacting with people all over the world. Through the world of film I can actually travel and land anywhere across the world, appear in festivals homes virtually ... this is why I've chosen to expand my creative talents to create a film.
WHAT DOES THE NAME MEAN?
A few years back I released an album entitled "REMIX EXPERIMENT "and that was created with cutting-edge modern technology It was also a creative philosophy ..I have utilised this technology as a strong foundation for the soundtrack of the film.
I've had the pleasure to score for many productions, and there's always limitations from the directors and the owners of the content, there's permissions and copyright limits, and that's what's wonderful about directing my own feature film is that boundary dissolves and suddenly on a visual sense and a musical sonic sense, I can have the freedom to move him direction as my heart sees fit. There is so much incredible film imagery and music that has been made over the last century that we actually seen a huge amount of footage and music return back into humanity as creative common( copyright free). By learning from the speical fx shots and visual narrative of old filmmaking techniques and also hearing the melodies and rhythmic structures of music created in the 1800s ,I'm learning. Through the art of the past. From distant elders that I've never met and by connecting with this material I'm helping to keep this material seen and heard. sampling and recontextualizing art may seem strange to some, it's always been contentious....but.. on the flip side of that, there is an incredible collaboration that outlives the mortality of humans. And we see an abstract historial depiction of the birth of cinema and sound.
I'm excited to bring back to life these hidden gems and help to re tell some of their story to new audiences. In this day and age in an internet connected world, where everyone has screen 24/7 in their pocket, to look at the beginnings of phonographs, tape cassette players wire recorders, record industry boom ,cathode tubes & the invention of television, satellites, microprocessors ..
The dream of capturing image and sound in it's embryonic form, from nothing NOW inside an exponetial technology explosion, is in itself an incredibly worthwhile endeavour. I can imagine someone younger watching this film and discovering a whole range of knowledge that they didn't accept before about the story of how we capture art and the incredible imagination, tenacity, scientific endeavours and achievements it took to get to where we are now. Looking at imagination and dreams in this way gives you hope the best parts of us as humans can overcome and propel us out of the worst pitfalls and scenarios.
HOW DO YOU MAKE A FILM ALONE IN A PANDEMIC?
Obviously this is been a fantasticly practical way to make a film without having a soundstage camera crew ,makeup crew, assistant directors, lighting designers ,sound recordist, catering team it would be completely impossible for me to pull this off! let alone from
confines of my home in Australia. By remixing this old footage I've been able to input this incredible array of action and drama and suspense into the plot of my film, where I can drive and crash a vintage car, travel through the sky in a hot air balloon, be taken aboard a 1950s style sci-fi Martian spacecraft. Many of the sets, actors, props and narration is all sampled from a wonderful array of archival footage. I also get a chance to write a score and hopefully when the times right, perform it globally, something many film directors could not enjoy, The live performance of their film. I'm wearing a lot of hats during this process obviously as a cinematographer, director, screenwriter, composer & editor it's a huge undertaking but to be fair I would be lying saying that I have to create the enire content alone, I'm just digging and digging through footage and finding acres of inspiration. If I can raise some coin I'd love to be able to expand to work with others. But for now its working just fine..I'm up for the challenge
My vitual film crew have too many names to mention... I've got no access to the names of the crews for most of this stuff...
WHEN WILL IT BE FINISHED?
Depending on finacial support.. in roughly 7 months away. The way I've decided to complete the task of making this film is by pre-selling tickets to the people that would have seen me perform over the last 25 years internationally. They would know me through my work with Circus & Theatre through music shows through festivals through art centres and of course online! I'm asking support by simply purchasing a ticket. There's a lot of crowdfunding sources and a lot of online platforms in which to raise money. I've decided to not go through those avenues.. I'm using Humanitix, they are a fantastic not for profit organisation.
People that want to add extra level of support apart from the ticket price will be credited at the end of my film, in terms of their name listed as a supporter. IF! all things go to plan its out November..
ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT IT WILL IT ALL COME TOGETHER IN THE END?
Yes.. But it won't be easy..but of course, if there is anything that I have learned by watching all this footage..It's that there are no excuses!
It is a very difficult time to know what to do as an artist it's a very difficult time to ask people going through such incredible hardships and obstacles in their own life...but who hasn't through time!
It's my job to continue to create phenomenal artwork amidst war, admist pandemics & environmental catastrophes.. that's my job as an artist ..and I feel now more than ever is a great time to spread something artistically beautiful, full of rich imagination and hope and inspire the people around me to continue on the path. And like generations before us, Dream their way forward untill it happens.