I Remember Things By Yelling Them

I love watching people die horrible deaths on tape. I love seeing fake blood pour out of an open wound. I love seeing unidentified viscera, concocted from mashed up toilet paper and ketchup, pulled from unintelligible parts of the human body. I love oozing pus. I love picked over scabs. I love Robert Rodriguez’s special effects. I love sores and abrasions of all kinds. I want to see skin ripping, eyes bulging, bile spewing—and I want it to look (simultaneously) as real and as fake as possible.

For a long time I thought that my love of guts and gore began and ended with B-movie-style horror. I couldn’t move beyond gunshots, stabbings, stigmata, etc., when imagining and representing death. Then I found YouTube.

I ‘m a late-comer to YouTube. It was only about a week ago that I really began to understand what an excellent resource it can be. After a little poking around, I finally discovered that YouTube is not only a place for me to watch Chris Benoit and JonBenet Ramsey tributes, nor is it a place where people only post shitty videos of their dog, their baby, or their band , etc.—it is also a place for teenage boys to post DIY weapons videos!

This discovery has radically altered my video making. On YouTube it is possible to get instructions on how to make a whole range of weapons (click, here, here and here)—including my all time favourite: DIY tasers.














These videos not only offer timely information on how to arm yourself, should you, for example, have the misfortune of ending up in a Vancouver airport, but they also offer a plethora of new and creative ways to kill someone off—on tape.

Using everyday materials, such as pens, paper, elastics, batteries and tape, bored teen and tweenagers have found ways to create cheap, accessible and (most importantly) functioning weapons that can be easily brought into any film or video production no matter the budget.