Jeremy Floyd wasn’t planning to remix public domain footage the day he did. In fact, he barely knew about the contest until it was nearly over.

“I ended up cutting this thing together on the last day of the contest and turned it in right under the wire,” Floyd said, describing how his entry for the 2025 Public Domain Day Film Remix Contest came to be. That last-minute effort paid off: his short film, Moving Pictures Aren’t What They Used to Be, earned an Honorable Mention.

Floyd’s film is a brisk yet layered tribute to the experimental, often unruly spirit of pre-Code Hollywood. Set to a remixed version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the film weaves together scenes from nine films released in 1929—the year they entered the public domain in 2025.

“I’ve been interested in pre-Code talkies for years,” Floyd said. “But it never occurred to me that there was a pocket of time where the talkies were being made without a censorship regime governing them.”

The phrase “pre-Code” refers to a roughly five-year stretch before the Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, was enforced in 1934. During that era, filmmakers explored topics that would later be deemed too provocative for mainstream audiences: sexuality, crime and interracial relationships, among others.

Floyd first learned about the era during a college class on screwball comedies. A quick aside from a professor stuck with him. Years later, that moment helped shape the foundation of a contest entry he assembled in a single day.

Though rushed in execution, the film feels thoughtful and purposeful.

“I knew I wanted to use one of the songs that entered the public domain,” he said. “And Rhapsody in Blue was calling to me more than Singin’ in the Rain or a couple of the others. So, I kind of started there.”

The original 18-minute track was cut to two and a half minutes. From there, Floyd stitched together sequences that carried emotional and thematic weight. What emerged was a meditation on how early sound cinema captured a boldness that would soon be restrained.

“I wanted to highlight things that one wouldn’t associate with old Hollywood,” Floyd explained. “Some of the spicier undressing moments, a POV rifle shot that hits a victim, people of different races dancing together—those things would soon be explicitly forbidden.”

But the piece doesn’t dwell entirely in provocation. Floyd also emphasizes the joy, humor and movement found in early sound films.

“A big part of the video became a celebration of some of the amazing dancing in these films,” he said. “Then it became about finding the right soundbites—about money, murder and magic—and building transitions that mirrored the mood swings in the music.”

The film’s title, Moving Pictures Aren’t What They Used to Be, came from a rap-like performance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. In the original context, the line described the transition from silent film to talkies. But Floyd saw a broader resonance.

“It really seemed to capture something greater about this particular moment in cinema history,” he said. “I restructured the opening to use the theater shot from The Man with the Movie Camera and ended with audience applause from Spite Marriage. It felt like a bookend.”

Editing was both intuitive and strategic. Floyd said he gave himself additional constraints beyond the contest rules: no footage outside 1929, no non-public domain material and no assets that didn’t fit the overall theme.

The result is a short that plays like a time capsule cracked open. At moments, it feels celebratory. At others, jarring. Then tender again.

“I was striving for a sentiment of nostalgia but also a kind of awe,” Floyd said. “Seeing two women being that affectionate, or people of color expressing love onscreen—it feels electric, especially knowing how long that was suppressed.”

The pre-Code period, though brief, left a lasting impression on him. Floyd sees echoes of that era in modern cinema, but he doesn’t believe we’re living through a similar moment of creative freedom.

“Sadly, I fear it’s just the opposite,” he said. “The high-water mark for indie film was probably the late 90s. The rise of streaming promised more, but the quality’s being slashed. The motto seems to be: it only has to be good enough.”

He pointed to the collapse of the home video market and diminished marketing budgets as major obstacles for independent filmmakers today.

“It’s so hard to get things made, and even if it does get made, it often gets lost in the shuffle,” Floyd said. “All distributors have slashed their marketing budgets to nearly zero for anything but tentpole movies.”

As a media historian and podcaster, Floyd often revisits old films with his co-host Brian Foster on their show, Grindhouse Institute. Their conversations dig into genre, politics and form. Floyd’s passion is not limited to nostalgia.

“If it weren’t powerful, why bother to censor or subvert it?” he said when asked about modern constraints on media.

For Floyd, censorship is always worth interrogating. He views it as a mirror for cultural anxiety, a tool used to shape or suppress narratives.

“It’s delightful to imagine a world where the Hollywood studio system existed without restrictions,” he said. “The cynic in me says that idea is naive. But the romantic in me can see how that kind of world could’ve shaped something better.”

Beyond remix contests and podcasting, Floyd is also venturing into documentary work. His upcoming film, The Donn of Tiki, explores the mythmaking of Donn Beach, the enigmatic founder of tiki bar culture.

“It’s told in a Rashomon effect where you don’t know exactly what was real and what was fantasy,” he said. “There’s a Rankin/Bass-style stop-motion puppet, 2D animation and a whole section devoted to Donn’s time in Hollywood as a bootlegger.”

Though it differs in tone and subject matter, The Donn of Tiki shares a DNA with Floyd’s remix project: both are about looking back to look forward.

“I think old Hollywood always has things to teach current filmmakers,” he said. “Often times, modern filmmakers are inspired by films that were inspired by older ones. It’s great to go all the way back and find that inspiration for yourself.”

One of Floyd’s most personal connections to early cinema came when introducing silent films to his daughter. That experience, he said, changed how he viewed them.

“I finally got over that hump and was able to get into them,” he said. “Seeing them through her eyes really unlocked something for me.”

He didn’t expect a last-minute project to resonate with viewers. But in highlighting a transformative era in cinema, Floyd reminded audiences what moving pictures once were—and what they still could be.

“It was pretty rewarding the whole way through,” he said. “But I really like the last 40 seconds.”