When I asked Eki that question, he knew all about Randy. Including how the guy pulled off such slick music videos in his one-room studio apartment. When a friend in the US sent me the link to the Bret Kavanaugh parody, it was like a video-snort of cocaine. I binged out. My favorite: 'How do you solve a problem like KOREA', What blew my mind was the use of news video clips and new lyrics to popular music. Copyrights cost an arm and a leg. Who was backing this guy? A rich Democrat? I wondered what company was behind it – I thought the production values were so good.
But in an interview on National Public Radio and another on the BBC (Impact), Randy said he did everything himself. And copyrights never came up. I called the Shark, who knows a lot about copyrights. She watched some of the videos and couldn't come up with an answer. The spliced interviews from news programs are hilarious. He impales his subjects (victims) with lines like, ‘Cut the shirt' when Betsy de Voss, Education Secretary knew zilch about public education.
The Trump administration is perfect for parody. It keeps giving him more stuff to make fun of. But where does he go from here? For starters, a personal appearance tour of 13 cities in the US and one in Canada. Stops include San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto and the belly-of-the-beast, Washington DC. I bet the DC tickets are sold out. Randy has pulled off an internet coup. He keeps coming up with new up-to-the-minute material. The last one I saw was The CELL BLOCK TANGO. Roger Stone and Trump must have loved it.
Source: the internet
Next week: The FACEBOOK censors
Note:
The question "how does he do it" is twofold. When it comes to music, it has been possible to make high-quality music in your bedroom for decades now. All it takes is a mic, a computer with appropriate software and a lot of talent. Which Randy clearly has plenty of.
As far as the videos are concerned, it's almost the same nowadays. Great cameras are very affordable, you can get a greenscreen backdrop for next to nothing, the same computer, and some software, and from there on... you guessed it, all you need is talent.
When we make our little music videos with Maggy, we're basically doing the same thing Randy does - of course, unlike our little films, he likely does this more or less as a full-time job, and each video may be a result of weeks of full-time work
As far as copyrights are concerned, as far as i remember, unlike here in Finland, parody works are an exception in the US copyright law, so Randy probably doesn't need to pay for the music he makes his own versions of.
We've done derivate versions of existing music too, but only using copyright free songs - old enough, or otherwise license free.
CU
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Eki
