HEART OF NEON is...
about remixing!
On the drive back from New Hampshire and the family Thanksgiving shenanigans my wife & I listened to one of our favorite music podcasts, HIT PARADE. This particular episode was about the evolution of the remix as it exists in chart music. I grew up during the rise of the extended dance remix, entranced by the 12” vinyl releases from The Thompson Twins and Depeche Mode. I don’t recall where I heard or read the quote, but at some point Brian Eno said he liked the idea of this kind of dance remixing because it is an opportunity to explore the idea space of the song.
This notion of exploring an idea through different iterations of style and emphasis appeals to me particularly. Editing, especially in documentary where the story often needs to be “discovered” rather than scripted, is at its heart this kind of exploration. I became a professional editor to pursue this specific kind of creative undertaking. It was an unconscious choice I think, though when I describe what I do I’m absolutely describing the remixing process.
Editing HEART OF NEON, for example, has been an iterative process, laying out a version of the story at hand, Jeff’s story, in a way I believe to be effective and entertaining. I review the edit myself or with others and make changes, and in the early stages these changes are radical. Draft 2 was a very different KIND of film from the third draft that followed it. Draft 5 was also a different film in contrast to both of those earlier iterations.
You have to WANT to explore the story space to find that right mix of elements and styles. I’ve talked about endurance before, and about being open to finding story elements where you didn’t see them before - those things are important without doubt. But this aspect of mixing those elements in distinctive ways, to find out where the flaws in your thinking are, is essential.
I first experienced the power of exploring the footage from different angles while working on the documentary at the time simply called RIGGED. Richard Hankin was the editor at the time, and he tasked me to assist him by editing footage collected in specific locations to create elaborate sequences for those locations in order to find the narrative opportunities those locations might contain. It was an intense gig that ultimately changed directors, and consequently changed the editorial crew, and, as if to prove my point for me, went with a new direction that built on our foundations. The team remixed all this material to best make the point the producers were trying to make.
(As a side note, I’m saddened to discover neither myself nor Richard Hankin are mentioned in the crew credits on the RIGGED website. No thanks or additional editing mentioned at all. Bummer. The assistant editor Claire Ave’Lallemant appears to have stayed to the end, though. Good for her. She’s talented.)
Jeff Minter is a remixer. It was Gary Penn who pointed that out to me. Jeff takes arcade tropes or game mechanics or, most famously, entire game designs, and remixes them through the filter of his creative impulses, his tastes, and his wealth of wisdom born out of the decades he has spent honing his craft. He creates entirely new games that build on arcade game legacy while pointing at new, intriguing possibilities for the future. In that regard, Jeff’s games are old AND new at the same time.
On this road trip back from New Hampshire I was trying to describe to my wife what that means, about how Jeff’s games are similar to John Peel’s description of the Manchester post-punk legends The Fall - “Always the same, always different”. It’s thrilling to be a Jeff fan and anticipate his next release. You know that there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy what he’s making, but there’s also an equally good chance that you’ll have no way of predicting what shape that creation will take.
As I write this, Jeff is working on polishing his next game for release as a continuation of his partnership with Atari.
It can’t come soon enough.