Yes Men

The yes men were totally awesome for what they do in the world of the media and crooked politics! They make it look so easy to scam a bunch of intellectuals that are suppose to be hearing speeches by scholarly politicians! They totally joke on everyone that "believes" in our government, and it's international relations.  

Their documentary relates to this found footage project because they are using other people's identities or work as their own credit to achieve pranks and scandals.  A lot of culture jamming filmmakers use clips from news and media, politics and celebrities to make them look stupid, which they usually are. I found in my project that it really wasn't very hard to achieve that, usually new anchors will just say stupid stuff like they are asking you to cut it up and make a culture jamming short film mocking them.  It's insane, the way the way that our media and government works, and to think that the yes men can get away with everything they do and lie about, it shows that with the internet you never really know how true your resources are. 

I think that this kind of filmmaking and activism in the media/film community is super important to reflecting on how we perceive all the media that streams in daily.  

I enjoy watching really good edits to found footage and culture jamming projects, I think they are funny and witty, and aaron valdez is amazing! I think that it is kind of a joke for intellectuals that cuts back at deceiving and melodramatic news shows, and reality shows, and anything really that is going on in entertainment.  It's hard to relate to those people that get sucked in to the mindless and trivial world of entertainment, I'd much rather see it piece together, getting a straight point across and bashing on the media news crews at the same time. 

It was hard for me to get started on this project because I couldn't grasp a solid concept or theme for what i wanted to do.  I don't keep up with the media/entertainment either so it was hard to relate something that is recent and interesting. It didn't take long though once I got on youtube and just checked out popular videos in recent news and i got an idea and easily reached one minute...I think i achieved it well. It just came so fast, and I feel like I got alot of extra footage that i could have made at least a 3 min cut, it probably would've gotten boring by that point though, who knows.