Fanboy Supercuts, Obsessive Video Montages

This insane montage of (nearly) every instance of “What?” from the LOST series started me thinking about this genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.

For lack of a better name, let’s call them supercuts. (Thanks, Ryan.)

Here are some examples I could find, but I’m sure there must be more. Post ’em in the comments and I’ll add them. Bonus points for supercuts with the most clips, the shortest clips, and in additional genres (sports? politics?).

UPDATE: This entire list (and many more) is now on Supercut.org. Add more there!

Film

Glengarry Glen Ross – Obscenity Count

Glengarry Glen Ross – “The Leads”

Ship, Computer, and Sauce in the first six Star Trek films

Shia LaBeouf in “No No No No”

Requiem for a Dream, montage of every drug montage (meta!)

Casino, every “fuck”

Big Lebowski, every “fuck”

Big Lebowski, Every “dude”

Big Lebowski, Every “man” (thx, Matt)

True Romance, every kill from the finale

True Romance, every “fuck”

Rushmore, handjob references (thx, Matt)

Scarface, every “fuck” (thx, oscar)

The Departed, every “fuck” (thx, oscar)

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, every “fuck” (thx, MeatFarley)

All the pauses and silence in His Girl Friday from 1940 (thx, progosk)

The Incredibles, buttons, doors, and explosions (thx, Joshua)

Fargo, every “yeah” (thx, Doobybrain)

Charles Bronson Death Wish Bodycount (thx, Dave)

Chris Hefner’s Talking Picture (The Road to Ruin), removes all words from a 1938 film (thx, Jamie)

Boondock Saints, every “fuck” (thx, Brandon)

Midnight Run, every “fuck” (thx, Lakawak)

Miscellaneous films, cops turning in their badge and gun (thx, Darrin)

Every “McFly” from the Back to the Future trilogy

Cell phone cliches in horror films

Mirror scares

Nearly every Hitchcock film cameo (thx, Oscar)

“We’ve Got Company” (thx, Buzzfeed)

“Get out of there!” (via Buzzfeed)

“It’s Gonna Blow!”

Every lightsaber ignition/retraction from the Star Wars series (thx, Buzzfeed)

Everything Chris Klein Says in “The Legend of Chun Li” (thx, Jeff)

“You look like shit.”

Every Arnold Schwarzenegger scream (thx, Buzzfeed)

Every Nicolas Cage freak-out

In 3D! (thx, Joe)

Every “Michael” in The Lost Boys

“Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Blah blah blah.”

7 minutes of face slaps in film

“It’s Showtime!”

“Nooooooooo!” (thx, Scott)

Every Bone Steven Segal Has Broken

TV

Every “What?” from the LOST series

Legend of Zelda TV show, Excuse Me, Princess!

Knight Rider – Turbo Boosts

CSI: Miami, Caruso’s One-Liners

The Simpsons, every couch intro

The Sopranos, Every single whacking

Ojamajo Doremi, every transformation

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Last 10 seconds of every episode of season 1

Every Dragonball Z transformation

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, every finishing move from Season 1

Deadwood, every curse in Episode 1, 2, and 3 (thx, Brian W)

LOST, Sawyer says “Son of a Bitch” (thx, Jordan)

Rozen Maiden, every “Desu” (527 times! More context, thx Jason)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, every mention of “Buffy” from Season 1 (Chuck Jones)

Battlestar Galactica, every “frak” from season 1 (thx, Nowak)

Big Brother’s Julie Chen, every “but first” (thx, Cardhouse)

House M.D., every “lupus” reference (thx, engtech)

LOST, Sawyer’s nicknames in the first three seasons (thx, oscar)

Rachael Ray, “Mmm!”

MTV’s Newport Harbor, 82 “like”s in one episode (thx, Jamie)

Red Dwarf, every “smeg” reference in all 52 episodes (thx, arto)

LOST, Desmond saying “Brother” (thx, cypher)

The Wire, Clay Davis’ “Sheeeeeit” (thx, dunk3d)

24, Jack Bauer says “damn it” (thx, jonathan)

The Simpsons – Homer’s D’ohs, excerpt from an official episode (thx, Scott)

Scrubs – Every Girls Name to J.D. from Dr. Cox (thx, oscar)

Naruto – Every Rasengan from the filler story arcs (thx, Binkley)

The Hills, without the dialogue (thx, Rex)

Bea Arthur says “Whoa!” on the Golden Girls (thx, BWE)

The Office – “That’s What She Said” (thx, Jason)

“I’m not here to make friends” from every reality TV show (thx, Rich)

Dr. Who – “What are you doing here?” (thx, Duncan)

The Sopranos, every profanity

The Royle Family, every “My Arse!” (thx, Dunk)

Stargate SG-1’s Teal’c says “Indeed” (thx, Torley)

Kramer’s Entrances from Seinfeld (thx, Buzzfeed)

Every “Dude” from Hurley on LOST

Every Secret Ingredient from Iron Chef America (thx, Oscar)

Mad Men’s Don Draper says, “What?”

Every cigarette smoked on Mad Men

Every “Christmas” from the 90210 Christmas special

Star Trek, Spock says “Fascinating” (thx, Scott)

MST3K, The Many Names of David Ryder (thx, Nathaniel)

Games

Half-Life series, every G-Man sighting (and part 2)

Every Famicon (NES) Game Title Screen

Metal Gear Solid questions? (thx, William)

Miscellaneous Sources

Various films, Wilhelm Screams

Various films, The Slow Clap

Various films, NOOO!

Steve Jobs says “Boom!” in Mac keynotes (thx, Jeff)

Clip from Christian Marclay’s “Telephones” from 1995 (thx, progosk)

iPhone “Hello” ad, heavily inspired by “Telephones” (thx, progosk)

Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” every “Oh Lord” (thx, oscar)

2008 State of the Union, without any speech

Bill Gates says “Uh…” in Rocketboom interview

Collage of “Zoom In and Enhance” scenes

“Hey, Guys!”, collection of YouTube beauty guru intros

Collection of “Myspace salutes” (more context)

“I Could Tell You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Club Drunk Party Hands, every use of those four words in the Billboard Top 10 for 2010

All the pauses in Sarah Palin’s response to the 2011 Arizona shootings

Obama says “spending”

Audio

Only the inhaling from an hour of NPR’s All Things Considered (Chuck Jones)

Loveline, every question asked by the hosts (Chuck Jones)

Loveline, every name mentioned in alphabetical order (Chuck Jones)

Loveline, every “Yes” and “No” (Chuck Jones)

Loveline, every number (Chuck Jones)

Loveline, interjections (Chuck Jones)

Loveline, dead air (Chuck Jones)

NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, obscenities only (thx, oscar)

Honorable Mention

A commenter points to the work of Chicago artist Chuck Jones, who’s created a number of excellent audio and video supercuts he calls Isolation Studies. I’ve listed them all above.

The “Most Obsessive” award goes to artists Jennifer & Kevin McCoy for their work Every Shot, Every Episode from 2001, a 277 DVD set compiling 10,000 clips from Starsky & Hutch, arranged by categories like “Every Dead Body,” “Every Mirror,” “Every Gunshot,” and “Every Affirmative Response.” Other work of theirs includes I Number the Stars, a shot-by-shot index of the first 20 Star Trek episodes in 120 categories, How I Learned, a 10,000 shot inventory of the show Kung Fu in over 100 categories, and Every Anvil, cataloguing the violence in 100 Looney Tunes cartoons. Mind-blowing. (Thx, Buzzfeed!)

June 15, 2011:

The earliest supercut appears to be Joseph Cornell’s “Rose Hobart”, a short film from 1936. It compiles nearly every scene featuring the obscure actress in the 1931 B-movie, East of Borneo.

Want more? Michael Bell-Smith and I launched a site dedicated to the supercut genre at Supercut.org.

Comments

    Goddamn brilliant. I could watch these all day long. It’s like abstract art, except I’d be scared to meet the artists that have the time and energy to make these…

    If I could just get a list of movies with slow claps in them, I could reduce the number of potentially watchable films by that number.

    Obscenity-Only NWA is also surprisingly listenable.

    You must not have read that “What?” montage description. The guy’s not a super fan at all, and it’s not every single “What?” I think this is more a case of someone actually not liking Lost very much and creating something to make fun of it…

    love this. gonna be watching the flying car supercut (KITT!) all weekend. does that make me obsessive?!?

    Mike: Good point. Ultimately, I don’t think intent really matters much… The video creator could intend it as criticism (e.g. pointing out cliches or mannerisms in political candidates) or artistic merit (like the Chuck Jones work). But you’re right, in the LOST case, he’s clearly not a fanboy.

    not exactly in line, since it eschews strict repetition, but c. marclay’s “telephones” is an early (1995) precursor in this vein (subsequently familiarised by the iphone ripoff).

    perhaps my favourite supercut proper (albeit with an opposite tack) is valentin spirik’s, in which the howard hawks classic is distilled to its pauses/silences: “his girl friday – between the lines edit” (via dvblog).

    There were some great ones from Arrested Development (chicken dance, “hey brother”, “I’ve made a huge mistake”, the Tobias laugh) on youtube, but they seem to have been taken down, unfortunately.

    Don’t forget the two supercuts made by Pixar and included on the Incredibles DVD as easter eggs. One shows every door and button in the film, the other every explosion.

    A friend of mine made a “remix” of In The Air Tonight years ago. It was every “oh lord” and he did it the old-fashioned way: cassette recording off the radio. I never got to hear it, but it struck me as such a funny idea.

    You inspired me to recreate it as a tribute, so here it is.

    Norwegian Artist Candice Breitz has been at this for ages.

    Here’s the description from Hoxton UberGallery the White Cube:

    Candice Breitz

    Candice Breitz: From A to B and Beyond

    If there’s a rule of thumb for looking at Candice Breitz’s work, it’s the rule itself. Every one of her video installations can be reduced to a very simple formula. Take the Four Duets series, for example: select four music videos of sentimental love songs from the last half-century. Collect and string together the moments in which each of the four performers sings either “I, me, my” or “you.” Display the “I Loop” opposite and in dialogue with the “You Loop” from each song. Discard all remaining footage. Or Diorama, 2002: start with the cliffhanger episodes of each of the fourteen seasons of the soap opera Dallas. Edit out a string of repetitive sound bites for each of the main characters. Discard all remaining footage. Display in a living room furnished out of local charity shops. Or Soliloquy Trilogy, 2000: take blockbuster movies starring three Hollywood icons and, in each case, reduce the entire film to the star’s speaking parts only. Discard all remaining footage. Project in small cinema. Or Becoming, 2003: begin with seven romantic comedies. Edit each down to the female star’s key scene. Discard all remaining footage. Act out the selected scene yourself, as best you can.

    I wish someone would do a montage of “This is the last time you’ll ever see these!!!” shirt-liftings from Arrested Development.

    I think one the first guy to ever make movies like this was an French artist, François Yordamian, who edited The Young and the Restless in 1999 : on one movie, all the actors were taking their heads into thei hands, on antoher they turned around, on another they sighed… Impossible to find on youtube or whatever, but there’s a paper about it

    Andy,

    indeed Candice Breitz work is awesome and, like a lot of good video art, surprisingly well hidden. I saw Diorama as part of the Zabludowicz collection in the inaugural show at its new home. It was shown in two rooms with 1950s furniture, set as a living room and a bedroom, a television on every available surface, low lighting, and each screen showing a different Dallas character in a really short loop. Picture Bobby breathlessly saying “mother” while from another screen his mother curses “never”. Being caught in the cross-fire of eight or so screens, alone, with the doors closed, was highly disturbing. Getting out of those rooms though, back into the light, was as elating as leaving behind a decade’s mental illness.

    I think that Becoming was shown at the Venice Biennale 2005. I didn’t really get it then, but in retrospect, and with the context provided by blog comments like these above, and developments; like karaoke rick rolling (via fimoculous) Candice seems to have taken a pre-eminent position in many aspects of (DIY) video art.

    Thanks for the supercuts.

    The most quotable movie of all time isn’t mentioned. Of course, I’m referring to “Airplane!”.

    Only once in my life did I ever utter a statement ending in the word “altogether” and have someone else repeat it with me. Surely you remember that, Andy?

    Daniel

    Hi,

    I made the audio pieces and also the Buffy thing. It’s on youtube if you search for it. I no longer have the time to make these kinds of pieces, because I have 22 month old daughter, and two jobs.

    I’m glad that I got mine in early, as I love work like this, but don’t want to make any more. I got to see Jennifer & Kevin McCoy’s “Every Shot Every Episode” when it was at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. It was amazing and I can’t imagine a couple making that kind of work together and remaining married. Are they still married?

    The rest of my work is either at my site http://www.babygorilla.com or a chuckbabygorilla on youtube.

    Thank you for the spike in bandwidth.

    One I’ve long been looking for: Letterman did a recut of George W Bush’s State of the Union speech (one of em, anyway) that contained nothing but the pauses. Granted, it was intended to look like W got up there and couldn’t think of anything to say, but either way that’s dang entertaining….

    I’ve been wanting to make one of these for ages, taking one popular phrase from loads of movies and merging it.

    Is there any easier way to search for the clips, rather than my current method of searching wikiquote, then scanning through a film I find and trimming that certain clip? Where the hell is this “search videos for phrases” thing we were promised so many years ago?

    Can we get a montage of every time Chris Hanson reveals himself on Dateline NBC’s “To Catch an Online Predator”? Or maybe the perps’ reactions?

    Where does one go to request a supercut that may not be in existence yet? This seems like a good place to float ideas, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a centralized location — a web site completely dedicated to this, rather than a log entry — to post and request supercuts? (Maybe one already exists?)

    Anyway…

    I’m thinking a montage of every time Angel kicked or smashed a door in on Angel would be funny.

    @B Plus: A supercut of “I’m Chris Hanson…” would rock!

    I had no idea Silvio had whacked so many of his fellow Mafiosi. This site is the things dreams are made of. It’s like being in the same room with everyone else remembering all the words to all the songs and sketches and shows. A perfect example of why baby boomers can’t and won’t let go. It’s all too good. Thank you.

    Fun stuff! My husband and I love these! I especially enjoy the Bea Arthur one. However, you need to do one based on how many times Bea, as Dorothy, touches another character. This usually happens during shocking moments on the show. My college roomie and I used to count….it was a pretty high. 🙂

    Thx for adding SG-1, Andy! I’m making my way (in the world today) through these… SADLY these are dead:

    * True Romance, every kill from the finale – This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.

    * True Romance, every “fuck” – This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.

    * Chris Hefner’s Talking Picture (The Road to Ruin) – 404 but can be found @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohbiQO405xY

    * Ojamajo Doremi, every transformation – This video has been removed by the user.

    * Every Dragonball Z transformation – This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by FUNimation Entertainment.

    * Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, every finishing move from Season 1 – This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.

    * LOST, Sawyer’s nicknames in the first three seasons (thx, oscar) – This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC Universal.

    * 24, Jack Bauer says “damn it” – This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by FOX.

    * The Hills – This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom.

    * Various films, NOOO! – This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.

    And mo’ additions:

    * http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=rmoisescot&view=videos has more Steve Jobs stuff, like “One more thing…” @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHGj8AuEv3E and “The best stuff in the world…” @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfWd6rgGPjg

    * Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay going “It’s raw!” (thx to my wife, who watches this show) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFlkqu9TMnk

    * Tourettes Guy Swears (set to “Every Breath You Take”) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GR0sKRji6Q

    * Harrison Ford’s “My Wife! My Family!” (has been popping up on multiple sites lately) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-vjbuodBEU

    😀

    Just discovered this following a link in the “Not here to make friends” entry in the fourfour blog. Great work, Andy!

    Here’s another one you don’t have on the list yet – it’s from a 2008 British movie called In Bruges that was a flop in the US box office but has become a cult hit in the UK. This neatly packaged compilation of all the cursing in the film was provided as an extra on the DVD, so not strictly a “fanboy” work, but still deserves to be included in this list. If you haven’t seen it, the movie itself is well worth seeking out…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDyEbUUpiLc

    What software do people use to make the supercuts?

    If I wanted to make one using an MKV as the source, what would I need to do?

    I’ve been doing a series on State of the Union addresses for a while now:

    Bill Clinton saying numbers in his State of the Union Address 1997.

    http://vimeo.com/2717623

    Silences in George W. Bush’s State of the Union address from 2003.

    http://vimeo.com/2717588

    I’m a member of Wreck and Salvage who made the Sarah Palin piece, though that was made by Erik Nelson.

    I didn’t see the “You’re/he’s/she’s good” supercut. That phrase shows up in every action/heist/con movie ever made. Bonus for “You’re good. Very good.” Some superfan get on that!

    The Hours is of course the best supercut movie ever made. Mesmerizing.

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