I just love the way this video was put together. It looks like a very cleverly done low budget project. The special effects and the clever directing make up for the cheezy costumes and the "shot on video" look. The music is a little intense. . but so is the video:
My daughter takes Karate lessons at the local ATA school and this is a project we worked on during a summer camp program. Everyone in the video is a black belt at the school either as a student or as a teacher. The "villian" is the owner and his wife, also a teacher and black belt, was the one who came up with the video concept and coordinated everyone. They did all the fight and dance choreography and I provided the video production.
I have never worked with a more focused and disciplined group of people, especially such a large one, on such a complex project. It all went incredibly smoothly considering how much we had taken on.
Good old fashion video activism at it's finest. Don't mess with musicians in the age of YouTube! The original video got over 4 million hits!!
There is also a hilarious reaction from a United employee (it starts for a few seconds in just black but stay with it it's great) It reminds me of someone. . . I'm not sure who:
And Taylor Guitars also responded:
Finally, the resolution on how it all turned out:
The Brazen Heads - Who's Yer Paddy
If anybody has been wondering where I have been lately this is why. I just finished the second music video for my Celtic rock band The Brazen Heads
Recently on the Dilbert Blog [1/29/08], Scott Adams mused about the seeming randomness of the lyrics of popular songs. He challenged his readers to submit random lyrics of their own that could be combined into a song.
Lots of people submitted their random lyrics, and German band RIVO DREI put the best ones together, added music, and created a surprisingly great little song. Then one of the readers took it an extra step and made a music video using nothing but images from the Internet. You might be surprised how well it came out:
This is also a good example of how most music company executives wouldn't know what a good song was if it came up and chomped them in the arse. ;)
I find it very interesting that something like this video below, which is essentially a song that backs a political candidate, can strike a note inside of you that makes you think.
A political mashup meets a collage of music sung by some hollywood and music industry heavyweights (Black Eyed Peas, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Scarlet Johannsen, etc.) turns into subtle political art. So simple, but so poignant. This particular video is a wonderful minimalist approach to creating art as a political tool.
Also hosted at dipdive.com
I found Preston Reed while browsing around at the Broadjam Website. It's pretty cool solo guitar riffing. Broadjam is also a cool independent music site where you can upload your songs and get reviewed by the community. They also do videos and let you sell your songs as downloads for 99 cents. One of the downsides is that you can only acess the content on the broadjam website. There doesn't seem to be any way to embed their content into blogs so I can share a direct link to the material. I had to find the YouTube version to share it here. Looks like YouTube gets the clicks this time until Broadjam can work it out.
I'm one of those guys that just thinks YouTube picks some downright crappy videos for their front page, there is the shining exception from time to time. I give you: ANXIETY ATTACK.
Looks to be shot with a webcam or small camcorder, all stop frame animation, an original soundtrack/song - it harkens back to when MTV was sorta good. Chalk it up to a nice 2:52 of eye candy to enjoy. Don't let it be said that we can't enjoy a good video that's not serious material. This might be the latest meme.
-zen
Oilwellan is a YouTube producer who offers some very powerful slide shows, also known as montage videos, using a variety of historical and candid photography in a Ken Burns like style with relevant pop culture music to go along. I am a big fan of this technique because photos can often bring us even closer to the reality of life than video or film does for a variety of reasons: still images can include paintings and other kinds of art that takes us much further back in history, more people have still cameras so there is a much wider variety of imagery available, still photographs are much faster to grab and far less labor intensive and it is far easier for someone with low resources to access full resolution stills through the power of the internet than it is to access full resolution video. This makes still imagery a goldmine as a creative outlet. The drawback is that pretty much everyone with a computer is able to take a crack at slide show videos so there is a nauseating amount of them out there trying to be seen.
It does take talent to do a really good montage, however, because it draws on the same kind of visual and storytelling skill that filmmaking does. This video had my jaw permanently dropped as I marveled at the idiocy that Oilwellian has uncovered. The description is very simply:
The 29 percent
A group of U2 fans, who are also fans of the online 3D environment Second Life, have formed a group called U2 in SL which amounts to the worlds first virtual "tribute band" . . . or at least the first one I have heard of (details here and here). These folks have created online "avatars" who look just like the members of U2. They built a stage, complete with instruments, lighting, and pyrotechnics, they created elaborate animated "scripts" that the stage effects and characters perform for each song and they streamed audio from an actual live performance from a Boston U2 concert as the sound track. Add to this the trimmings of a concert setting such as T-shirt stands and merchandise and about 50 fans who showed up for the event (can't have to many people in one area yet or things slow down) and you have one of the more unique online experiences I have seen so far: an authentic life performance, of sorts, for live people participating in a virtual event. It also looks like they also had some people acting as the "camera crew" who each took video of different members and angles so that they could cut it all together into a concert highlights video which they have posted on YouTube.
Pretty Unique to say the least. They have no affiliation with the real U2. They make no money at all off these events and they have tried several times to contact U2 and their management to legitimize their efforts. The primary goal seems to be to draw awareness to various Bono charities.
What makes this special to me is that it is a creative labor of love that was put together by ordinary people who wanted to push the boundaries of traditional thinking. Because Second Life is a completely open environment that allows members to create and own anything they want (as long as they have the skills or the money to pay someone with skills) it is the perfect platform for these kinds of experiments.
What I love about this video is that it really goes for a full blown desktop musical with original music and everyone singing on the recording and then acting it out with simple DV production values. In this case it is a little cheezy and "insider" but it is really a concept that could strike a bigger chord if it is done correctly.
Ship of Fools Productions is a project that began in 1999 and it is a collaboration of 3 men: Actor Mike McCafferty who has had some success as a Hollywood actor, Jason Makiaris, who is a collaborator and composer, and Ben Plummier who is a writer and director of photography. Together they have made over 25 short films and counting. There motto is to always be shooting which I think is good advice [YouTube posts HERE]. The above playlist is all 5 parts of an episodic series that was submitted to a web competition known as Channel 101.
Channel 101 is an interesting story in itself. It is a website presenting itself like a TV channel that always has 5 shows running. The shows come from a competition where producers submit a pilot to be reviewed. Not all of them get past that stage. If the pilot is accepted, it is then screened before a large audience that meets regularly to review the submissions. Each show is rated and they are either canceled or greenlighted based on the ratings that this audience gives. If it is greenlighted, it goes on the front page of the Channel 101 website which is what they call their "Prime Time" spots. They then have a deadline to create a new episode which is then rated by the same audience in the same manner except it is competing with all the past winners and new submissions all over again. Eventually the show gets canceled but the trick is to see how long you can keep it running in the competitive bloodbath.
Now, back to Ship Of Fools Productions. Ship of Fools created a full blown musical about people trying to come up with a great idea for a Channel 101 TV show. It was so unique and clever that it became incredibly popular. They did several more episodes and claim that they were the only show ever in the history of Channel 101 to make as many episodes as they want and then walk away on their own terms. Quite an accomplishment.
Animusic is a company founded by Wayne Lytle who had always envisioned electronically synchronizing music with animation on a computer [Wikipedia link]. In 1995 he teamed up with computer Artist David Crognale to create a project for a commercial client. Since then Animusic has produced what they call video albums that is a CD like group of songs, only on a DVD, with animations to go with them. The first one was released in 2001. A great deal of their stuff has found it's way onto the internet. This clip is from their latest video album "Animuisic 2"
I was surfing around YouTube and I came across this video of a gospel music performance by Kirk Franklin and The Family that just blew my mind. We hear this in pop music now but it is easy to forget that this sound, and this style of singing, was born as a form of worship. These people are in Church. This is a prayer. Why can't the whole world worship this way?
I know it's a real old school style, and it's actually a clip from TV apparently but. . wow. . if this womans voice doesn't make your spirit soar on a Sunday morning. . . I don't think anything could. The hip hop video that follows it is a horribly jarring crash back to earth next to that gospel song . . . I don't know why they put them together like that. Unless you are a big rap fan then feel free to ignore it
This video was created using screen captures from the massively multiplayer online roleplaying video game Dark Age of Camelot. The characters in this game can do various emotes such as drinking (with invisible mugs in this case) or dancing, laughing,crying begging etc. This allows for a primitive sort of acting. Another character is played in first person view and that one acts as a second camera. Between this perspective and the primary characters own camera (played on a seperate computer) a great diversity of shots can be achieved. Other players are recruited as a supporting cast, a screen capture program is used to turn the game play into video clips and they are edited together with sound and/or music like any other footage.
I love this new generation of short films that are being created in video game engines because it represents a really innovative way to create 3D animation sequences. Look for more examples of of this approach in future posts. I have a feeling it was works like this that inspired the Southpark Episode that takes place in the World Of Warcraft.
Unfortunately I don't have much information about the producer of this video since the credits all seem to list people only by their character names in the game.
Technically this is a music video but I think it is a comedy first. Jessica Delfino describes herself this way:
"I am a filthy stand up comic with a perverted sense of humor who plays guitar and sings vulgar little songs."
