Back to the Future Opening Scene: Marty McFly Experiences Amplifier Power [VIDEO]

By Wesley Fryer On May 28, 2012 · · Add Comment

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For tomorrow’s opening keynote address at the “Ridiculous Innovation Conference” for Kansas City Public Schools, I have been wanting to use a video clip of the opening scene from the 1985 classic movie, “Back to the Future.”

'Back to the future' photo (c) 2008, renatodantasc - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

If you recall, hero Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) cranks up the power to an oversize speaker’s amplifiers and manages to blow himself across the room with his opening guitar chord. It took a bit of Google searching, but I found three different clips of this scene on YouTube. The best version is this thirty six second version, “Marty McFly hits a power chord!!!!”

The 66 second version, “Marty McFly experiences the FUS RO DAH!” has more details, but unfortunately (for my own purposes and needs) includes an ancillary audio clip.

If you’re not familiar with the term, knowyourmeme.com reveals:

“Fus Ro Dah” are the words used in a dragon shout that summons a powerful force from the speaker’s throat in the game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I’m guessing that’s the audio clip which is superimposed over the original “Back to the Future” version.

The longest version I found, “Back to the future speaker explosion,” is 98 seconds long, but includes a distracting watermark from the iOrgSoft software used to create the recording (most likely from an original DVD).

Can you think of a better movie clip than this one to illustrate the idea of “technology as an amplifier?” This is a statement I heard Jeff Allen share in a Skype conversation back in March of 2006, and it’s stuck with me ever since.

Technorati Tags: future, video, youtube, back, speaker, amplifier, clip, movie

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