“Plunderphonics” is a compositional technique of utilizing and manipulating one or more recognizable recordings to create a new composition,” so says the Rate Your Music page on the genre. It’s not the most popular type of music around, but it’s one that I find to be absolutely awesome. Sampling something for a song is one thing, but making an entirely new piece of music out of nothing but samples? That takes real talent. My favorite example of this type of music comes from the Australian group, The Avalanches, whose first album Since I Left You features nothing but samples spanning all decades and genres of music from Madonna to The Mamas and Papas. It really is like nothing you’ve ever heard and shows how with just a bit of creativity and talent, you can create something incredible out of something that already exists. 

While plunderphonics is most commonly associated with music, the idea of “sampling” is something that can be found across all art forms, from books, theater, paintings, video games, and, of course, film. When you think about it, the act of putting various images together to make something new is the fundamental idea of cinema itself. It’s not a shocking revelation to say that editing is an important part of filmmaking. However, what I find so captivating is when films and filmmakers sample clips and scenes from tons of other sources to tell their own stories. I guess the official, artsy term for this is “assemblage art” or found footage films. For the sake of keeping this solely about film, not confusing them with the horror style, and not so subtly tying the films to the beginning of the article, we’ll dub these types of film, Plunderfilms. 

Now, I know it’s a term that sounds like some bad, classic Hollywood description of a pirate movie, but I think it’s one that accurately describes these types of movies. In fact, plundering and searching for film is exactly how Joe Dante describes the making of his 1967 opus, The Movie Orgy (1968). A four-and-a-half-hour-long mashup of, well, everything. Movies, TV shows, cartoons, educational videos, propaganda, game shows, anything goes in this movie…and it’s awesome. It really is an explosion of everything put to the screen; one minute, you’ll be watching a Marx brothers clip, and the next, you’ll be watching an instructional video on prepping for a nuclear strike by the Soviet Union. In many ways, it depicts the state of the world better than many of the movies released around the same time. I mean, what better way of showing how everything operates than literally showing everything? Dante describes the movie as crude and in terrible taste, but it’s one that really is like no other film. Its influence looms over almost every supercut of material on YouTube or otherwise today. Folks like the crew of Everything is Terrible! have built their whole brand on comedic supercuts of thousands of different clips. 

To be serious for a moment, though, plunderfilms (despite the wacky title I’ve given them) can be more than just comedic mashups of cartoons and movies. Directors and artists like Bruce Conner and Kevin Rafferty have used experimental collages of film not just to show the world but also to commentate on its issues. Bruce Conner is the guy who pretty much kicked off the entire idea of plunderfilms with his short film, A Movie (1958), combining found footage to produce a twelve-minute experimental short. He would continue this with films like Cosmic Ray (1961), commenting on topics like sex and war. Rafferty used the medium to present propaganda and misinformation about nuclear weapons spread during the Cold War in his film, The Atomic Café (1986). While we think of supercuts, mashups, and film being reserved for comedic purposes and Twitter fancams, they, much like any other form of film, can be used to depict the world in ways other art forms cannot. They are just as capable of producing emotions from the viewer as any real narrative film would. 

That doesn’t mean that they can’t still be fun, though. There is an element of satisfaction when watching these types of films, whether it be from recognizing the footage presented or making connections to other materials that relate to what the viewer is watching. And again, the comedic plunderfilms don’t just have to be for comedy. A recent example of artists using the medium for comedy and commentary can be seen in Everything is Terrible!, which I mentioned earlier. If you haven’t seen any of their videos or movies, please do so. They are incredibly unique and creative. They initially began as a collective archiving random 80s and 90s videos that were humorous in how cheesy they were. But with their films, they have evolved into something much more. For example, one of their more recent films The Great Satan (2018) is an hour of compiled footage of videos, news recordings, cartoons, and music videos all revolving around Satan and Christianity. The film is funny on its own just through the absolute weirdness on display, but it also uses the footage to show the effects of the “satanic panic” of the 80s and how that influenced media being produced at the time. 

To tie this all the way back to my stolen description of plunderphonics from the beginning, I recently watched their film, EIT! Does the Hip-Hop Vol. 1: Gettin’ a Bad Rap (2013) and absolutely loved it. On the surface, it’s simply a collection of cringe-worthy rap and hip-hop clips from the past thirty years, but the magic of it comes from the fact that the footage is edited together in a way where each clip syncs up to remix into one giant song. In just forty-seven minutes, these guys prove that they are both DJs of sound and screen. But again, they use the comedic concept of the film for more than just comedy, this time showing how companies and people will jump on the bandwagon of certain trends without any knowledge of them solely in the hopes of gaining attention. Their films are genuinely great and show that even crappy exercise videos with Mr. T have some value to them.  

So what am I trying to prove with this? Nothing really. Plunderfilms are just a cool form of film and one that deserves more attention. They’re unique, interesting, and just a whole lot of fun to watch. Of course, there will always be that argument that these aren’t actually well-made and are just a lazy way of filmmaking, relying on the work of others like that one kid in every group project. But I think through their creativity, editing, and the messages they can present, they are more than just a quick way to make a movie. I mean, you try syncing up LL Cool J to that one video of Anne Hathaway imitating Lil Wayne; it’s not that easy. 

Article Courtesy of Brodie Blizzard