Noise From The Dwarf – a tribute to the tribute Features Posted by Daniel Stephenson & Ian Symes on 16th October 2012, 21:16 When Blake Neale’s video for Noise From The Dwarf – a musical celebration of Red Dwarf‘s past present and future, compiled by former Observation Dome colleague ‘Big’ Blake, and set to music by Ricardo Autobahn – first appeared online, we were blown away. It’s extremely rare to see a fan effort of such quality – technically and editorially – and with so much inventiveness, originality and style. There’s an incredible amount of individual clips in just under four minutes of screentime, but it’s the vast variety of sources from which the clips are drawn, from the obvious to the obscure, that revealed a true love for the minutia of Dwarf history, and inspired us to make a tribute to a tribute. G&T’s Danny Stephenson was so obsessed with the video that he undertook his own labour of love – to catalogue each and every single audio and video clip used, and document them for your reference. He’s done this via the medium of this annotated Youtube video: Whilst in the process of poring over each frame, we started to notice a fair few extra background details, snuck in via the crafty video manipulation skills of The Artist Formerly Known As Big Blake. We didn’t spot these on first viewing, and we’ll wager that a few of you wouldn’t have either. Thank the lord for screengrabs, then. First up, look on the magazine rack behind Hollister in this scene from Pete Part Two: There’s promos for Back To Earth and Series X, along with a copy of the Red Dwarf Movie script! And next up, in this Rimmer scene from Holoship, the science room is adorned with a full complement of Red Dwarf DVDs. Unfortunately, some scruffy bastard has left one of these DVDs out in the Better Than Life drive room scene… …which also features a complete set of novels, and – beautifully – the front page of reddwarf.co.uk circa 1999 on one of the monitors. Meanwhile, in Lister’s Ouroboros sleeping quarters, there’s something we can’t quite identify. There’s a photo of Rimmer/Chris and Lister/Craig with an unidentified third person, on the wall of the bunk between the two characters. Best guess is that the mystery man is Blake himself, although we could be missing something completely obvious. And finally – we think, but do let us know if we’ve missed anything – there’s a full set of VHS tapes in this scene from Epideme. This even includes Six of the Best, all the Smeg Ups/Outs releases and Danny’s rubbish Tongue Tied video. Things like this, plus the inclusion of clips from the Series X pre-publicity, Red Dwarf USA, Bodysnatcher, Beat The Geek, deleted scenes, out-takes and even that Lister link for a Christmas repeat of Back To Reality, are what set Noise From The Dwarf apart from the rest. Many congratulations to Blake Neale/Blue Sun Pictures for creating a masterpiece of recycled footage; an unofficial promo piece for the new series which suggests that all the PR campaigns under the sun could never match up to the love, care and dedication of a proper fan.
You could well be right; I thought at first it was the Six of the Best CD, but I couldn’t quite make it out.
Brilliant video by Blake (shits all over the series X viral stuff, huh?) and great deconstruction by Danny and Ian. Hadn’t noticed *any* of the easter eggs – fantastic attention to detail.
Re the BtL CD – I think it’s the Tongue Tied CD, too. I don’t have it, myself, but the font, colours and lay out of the writing seem to fit.
Kryten’s VII costume is, and always will be, utter shite. Also, the ‘kegs’/’legs’ lines together = excellence.
Can’t believe the attention to detail in this video, absolutely amazing. Unfortunately it just brings home to me how annoying I find Chris’s Series VII Ace voice in comparison to it in Dimension Jump.
I still haven’t got tired of this. I’ve watched it a stupid number of times. It just gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling about how great and expansive Red Dwarf is. My favourite sequence is still: “Follow the Rimmer-shaped blur!” “Apparently the gentleman’s name is Rimmer, sir.” “They broke my leg!” “They broke my leg!” “Better-better-better-better dead than smeg!”
Incidentally, I’d never seen the original “Golden Age of Video” thing – I didn’t even realise Blake had got the idea from somewhere else. However, maybe it’s the Dwarf bias, but his is way, way better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUX9ja5ZY6M I have to agree. I think the Golden Age of Video is to broad a subject and as a result the video seems to have quite a small spectrum (you get a good idea of the editor’s favourites rather than a diverse view of any “golden age”). With a more specific subject matter (Dwarf), I think the idea works better. I love that music though.
A lot of people on the TOS forum were saying the music made the video unbearable for them. I can’t see it myself. It’s not the sort of thing I’d usually choose to listen to, but it suits this particular purpose absolutely perfectly.
Not exactly the sort of thing I’d listen to in the car but, yes, it’s exactly the right accompaniment to a fast paced montage.
I think the original Golden Age of Video suffers from the fact that the video isn’t quite as slick as the music. Blake’s version addresses this by a) Blake clearly being a fucking awesome editor, and b) having the video done by the same person who put the ‘lyrics’ on to the track.
Pretty sure 3:00 is ‘Cassandra’ and not ‘Only the Good…’. I like the music. It reminds of the music you might get on a Sonic game. My favourite thing about the video is the inclusion of the one not shit bit of the US pilot.
Well bugger me, I might be a bit slow on this one, but I’ve just also realised – where there are two sets of lines together, each set RHYMES! starting with “…marrowbone jelly…Bangalore belly” “…phone call, I think it’s for you”…”they’re tying him to the stake, it’s Winnie the Pooh…”. “…do you have ANYTHING to say?”…”J, O, Z, X, Y, Q, K…” etc. I am overwhelmed with the skill in this video! *faints*
> A lot of people on the TOS forum were saying the music made the video unbearable for them. A lot of the people on the TOS forum make life unbearable for me. :P
Thanks for sharing and annotating this; I hadn’t seen it. I’m still smiling at poppadom/condom and Ghandi/sandy. Nice of him to link to G&T as well.
Loving the original tribute – it’s the first I’ve seen of it, and it’s a wonderful idea executed pretty well. Love all the background details that have been added in post, also! The annotated video is pretty good at pointing out the clips used, barring a couple of mistakes as listed above. One more to add to the pile, BTW – I’m pretty sure the clip of Rimmer at 2:17 is from Identity Within rather than Bodysnatcher. Even if the audio isn’t, the video certainly is as the storyboarded Rimmer is wearing his Series VII togs.
Didnt know about the golden age of video thing. But one more kudos point for including Lister in the Dwarf video, doing the same line as the curator in the blade runner clip in the golden age video. Tributing the original tirbute video into the bargain.
Didnt know about the golden age of video thing. But one more kudos point for including Lister in the Dwarf video, doing the same line as the curator in the blade runner clip in the golden age video. Tributing the original tirbute video into the bargain. I spotted that. Glad i’m not alone :D
