Synopsis

A music video for the Kathleen Edwards song Westby is comprised entirely of vintage stock footage including toy commercials, travelogues, and a primer on an unhappy adolescence.

Background

Created for and ultimately discarded by the 2004 Stockstock Film Festival, the piece is composed entirely of found footage.

This was the concept: pay $25 for a mini-DV tape of 30 minutes or so of footage downloaded from the Prelinger Archives - a humongous Internet library of stock footage. As its fine print says:

You are warmly encouraged to download, use and reproduce these films in whole or in part, in any medium or market throughout the world. You are also warmly encouraged to share, exchange, redistribute, transfer and copy these films, and especially encouraged to do so for free.

Any derivative works that you produce using these films are yours to perform, publish, reproduce, sell, or distribute in any way you wish without any limitations.

Interesting concept. Continuing with the festival contest, once you get the tape in the mail from Stockstock, you are to edit the raw footage in any way you please, send the results back, and they pick the best of the lot for a screening in Seattle.

I have had an interest in doing music videos since at least 1989 when I edited together some Washington, DC vacation footage into a video for the 10,000 Maniacs song "The Big Parade". Proudly, and delusionaly convinced of its power, I mailed it to the band - have yet to hear from N. Merchant.

So, for this Stockstock thing. I really like Kathleen Edwards' 2003 album Failer. Working with the song "Westby" which was spinning in my head at the time I put together this little video.

This stock footage is crazy: I used some vintage Kodak commercial; a primer on guns; a Hot Wheels commercial; and this crazy afterschool-type special about a kid whose mother dies and while not putting on his mother's lipstick, is tormented by his stepfather. Powerful stuff.

I made a dub and sent the tape in. Just a formality I assumed - my video was painstakingly brilliant.

Or so I thought.

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