Power of the edit

Looking at some of the video courses experimental video work today which seemed to all draw heavily on the idea of the power of the edit and how this is something which can really be played with since the arrival of digital editing techniques reminded me of a few things (very much off the top of my head) which play with this in some shape or form.

Timber by Coldcut is the reverse of a usual music video (i.e. video edited to audio) in that the editing of the video creates the audio track. Some of this looks quite kitsch these days but at the time (early 90’s) this allowed the artists to create music / music videos all at once and give them the opportunity to also use it in a club scenario, live.

Natural Rhythm, more Coldcut this time with Hexstatic.

Koyaanisqatsi (a short extract above) uses editing to drive home the idea of film making as composing with rhythm, movement etc. (Koyaanisqatsi is one of aseries of three films of which we have two in the library).

A sample from the film Bodysong, a little similar to Koyaanisqatsi but focused on life as a. The score was composed by Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

Completely unrelated but here’s a whole mess of music videos from the Ninjatune label which I stumbled across.