Video Home System
- Paulie
- Sep 12, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 23
Hi hotties - I'm back after a very busy events week at work and boy do I have some sexy stuff for you today. This blessed Wednesday, we’re going to talk about home video. VHS, handheld cameras, found footage, the tapes you fed into the whole that went whirr.
Also a big thank you to everyone who has contacted us about the zine so far - I’m really sorry if I haven’t got back to you yet, the past couple weeks have been very busy and I’m still working through it all <3
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Mouse (1997)
Produced by skateboard brand Girl Skateboards, Mouse from 1997 is a fun short full of cool, sick and/or gnarly tricks bro dude! But it also features some skits written and directed by Spike Jonze including a Charlie Chaplin silent movie skit and a sequence that replicates the style of a trailer for a Blaxploitation film, while the actual skating footage is shot from a fish-eye type street level perspective. It is the variation in style, music and perspective that keeps this short interesting and unique.
Each skater also got their own animated intro as seen above which really adds to the personality of each section, showcasing the skaters own style. What interests me about this video is how it pays homage to different eras of filmmaking, from silent films all the way up to the ever-encroaching use of special effects by the late 90s. We see Chaplin skating haphazardly in a slapstick fashion, while later a modern skater the size of an insect skates with a boombox, hiding from mice and large smokers.
