RiP!: A Remix Manifesto

Brett Gaylor, a Canadian filmmaker, had set out to inform people of an uprising issue with technology today, the question of copyright. Gaylor has created his documentary "RiP!: A Remix Manifesto" to not only display important information on the topic of copyright, but to prove show his message to others. To be able to do this, Brett Gaylor had followed Gregg Gillis, also known as Girl Talk, who is a mashup DJ. Gregg Gillis creates new songs out of many old ones, causing many cases of copyright infringement. Although Gillis is taking these songs, it is questioned whether the new material is still a creative and unique piece of art. Brett Gaylor travels to meet many people in the film to prove his four main points, showing this film is in a non-sequential order.

"RiP!: A Remix Manifesto" is a great example of an expository documentary yet shows some examples of a reflexive documentary. This film is an expository documentary because of the specific ways that Brett Gaylor had made the film. Brett Gaylor had followed around Girl Talk for most of the film while having a narrator throughout the film. The narrator would tell you about general information on the documentary almost all the time, which helped the viewer understand Gaylor's points an opinions. Gaylor had also structured this documentary like an essay, starting with an introduction, then providing his four main points of:
1) Culture always builds on the past
2) The past always tries to control the future
3) Our future is becoming less free
4) To build free societies you must limit the control of the past
Not only does Brett Gaylor clearly present these points, but he does a very great job on elaborating on these points. The documentary shows qualities of reflexive documentaries too. One example of this is that Brett Gaylor is in the film and interviews people, so you are able to see him. Gaylor also talks about the creation of the film which shows the second example of a reflexive film. In one section of the film, a quality of a reflexive documentary is shown again when Gaylor is showing people the actual film of Girl Talk.

Overall I really enjoyed watching the film. I thought the film was very interesting, seeing as I have listened to Girl Talk for quite some time now. A strength of the film that I found was that Brett Gaylor presented the topics of the film very well. They were easily identifiable and he was able to present much more information and opinions on the topics. I found that the scene where it presented some copyright infringement problems in the past was very effective in showing where copyrights had started and how the progressed and changed. I found that when Gaylor was discussing the amount of money Girl Talk would have to pay for each song was a very effective way to show how illegal Girl Talk's songs are.

I was not able to find many weaknesses in the film because I had enjoyed the film. I had a problem with the filming sometimes, because I would notice that whoever was filming would zoom into random and unnecessary places. I found one time that someone was speaking, and the camera was zoomed into the speakers neck. One other weakness I found was that the documentary was very biased seeing as it was coming from a man who does not really enjoy copyrights. Although it is hard to not be biased in a film like this, it could have been improved if the creator had an unbiased opinion. Brett Gaylor presented this documentary in a very great way, and was able to prove the points of A Remix Manifesto well.