Huw Parkinson, the video whizz for ABC’s Insiders is one of, if not the most influential single voice in Australian satirical video.
Sounds like a big call right?
Well, Parkinson has created mashups of everything from Kindergarten Cop, Indiana Jones and Star Wars… all combined with the glorious, clusterfork that is the Australian government.
Talking with GOAT, we asked Parkinson about his process behind making the videos and selecting which films he’s parodying:
“I’ve tried to figure it out, like sort of an easier workflow for myself along the way just to get my own head around things and it never works the same way, from one piece to the next… Sometimes it is just a line that I can hear the dialogue bounce straight off the back of this grab from a politician, other times it’s just the scenario.”
Parkinson’s work is not perfect in execution (which is impossible with varying assets/scenes/lighting and timing) but conceptually and contextually his work is second to none with the quotes fitting in perfectly to people who both are and are not familiar with the film/politician.
Parkinson’s first hit was a Joe Hockey/True Detective parody that he made to share among his friends that turned into something much larger than he expected:
“I just was looking at that footage of him saying that [“poor people don’t drive cars”], there was a camera fixed on him in the radio booth when he said that. And I was just looking at how plain the background was and how steady he was keeping his head, he was just looking forward and I just thought “I can trace around that”.
In the five years since that videos release Parkinson’s videos were highlighted on Insiders where he now makes their hallmark social content. With former host Barrie Cassidy often building up suspense in the lead up to episodes and praising their “brilliance” and “ingenuity”.
His series ‘Life Accordion To Trump’ has garnered almost 3 million views but his highest viewed video on YouTube is ‘Winter Is Trumping’ a Game Of Thrones mashup starring the U.S. President, with over 7 million views, it proves that the video editor has hit a cultural point that translates internationally.
When asked what movie he hopes to use one day, Parkinson responded with Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:
“I just love the idea of somebody having their memory erased and applying that to certain policy decisions or just changes in attitudes that someone may emphatically have someday.
And let’s be honest, with the way Australian politics has been going recently… it doesn’t feel like we have too long before the context/quotes needed for such a piece of art, will come to fruition.