Your assignment is to create a video mashup that offers commentary on an aspect of culture. There are two possibilities for creating the mashup. One you can take an existing video, and then add new audio to change its meaning. Or you can take a piece of audio--e.g., a song or speech with a clear message--and then add images that deliver your commentary.

The key strategy you will use to generate your message is juxtaposition. If the audio you use is promoting a concept like equality or fair play, you'll want to layer images over the audio that analyze this concept and help viewers see it in a new light--images of poverty or athletes arguing that question the premises behind the concept will create a juxtaposition that delivers the mashup message.

You can learn more about mashups by reading this article by the Washington Post. You can see some examples of film mashups at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-cut_trailers.

You should also strive to be entertaining in the mashup. Humor, engaging images and sounds, and transitions and cuts will keep the mashup engaging.

Before you create the mashup, you will need to find raw materials

Political mashups are good candidates for this assignment, and you can download some news raw materials made available by the Washington Post.

You can also re-use some of the film mashups above and find many film trailers at the IMDB or the Apple trailer site.

I would also encourage you to try to find alternative forms to use for your mashup. You can find lots of video footage of current events on news Web sites. You can also use historical videos. Start with the Internet Archive, and particularly with the Praelinger collection. You can also look on YouTube, iFilm, and other Internet video sites, but you may want to try videos with some seriousness to begin with.

To compose the mashup you will use Windows MovieMaker or iMovie. You will need to import the video into the film editing program, and then edit the clip and add the audio to create your message. The movie editing programs are easy to use, but I will give a demonstration and help you.

If the video is in AVI or WMV format you will have no trouble (or AVI and QuickTime on the Mac). There are many video clips online that cannot be directly imported into the programs. In those cases, you can probably capture them with a screen recording program. You can download a 30 day trial of Camtasia for PC that will work. For the Mac you can purchase iShowU for $20, or I can capture the recordings for you. Sometimes you will just not be able to get the files you want, but in most cases you can. I will help you.

A draft of your mashup is due October 31st and the final version is due November 2nd.