Andrew Bird / Matching vs. Coordinating

Andrew Bird’s music video for his song Lull is fully animated. But it isn’t animated in a cartoon-like style. It looks like moving bits of paper. Everything is hand-drawn in actuality, but the pieces were moved around digitally – not by stop-motion.

I love this disconnection of styles. Usually, something that exists outside of a computer – something tangible, like a piece of paper – will be animated in a primarily non-digital manner (stop-motion, clay-mation, etc.). And conversely, digital pieces will be animated digitally. But in this video, physical pieces are digitally animated – this is atypical.

This is something like the idea of mix-and-match. Where originally, one thing matches with another thing, a new thing can be matched with the first in a way that coordinates. The difference between matching and coordinating is an important concept to understand in digital media. Mixing and matching allows for so many more options of styles, and for so many more outcomes.

Julia Nunes / Ben Folds

People tend to separate the internet from the outside world. Cyberspace is seen as a bit of life that is not an actual part of life. But sometimes the internet affects the real world in huge ways.

YouTube musician Julia Nunes was a sensation in herself, but when she posted a cover to the Ben Folds song Gone, a big thing happened. The song was a big hit, and Ben Folds was so impressed by it – the cover and her music – that he invited her to go on tour with him. Ben Folds is Julia Nunes’ favorite musician.

There was no contest or competition. YouTube was the only thing in play. Julia Nunes received this awesome opportunity because YouTube made the connection possible.

Julia Nunes' videosong cover of Gone by Ben Folds.

 Julia Nunes performing Gone with Ben Folds

Wait For The Summer - Yeasayer

Yeasayer's video for their song Wait For The Summer is very well-done and interesting. It pulls along a theme of apples and life - its beginning and end - as it explores the seasons and time. It explores the ideas of life through the apples, through the beetles scurrying around, and through the layering of silhouetted humans. They discovered that human silhouettes, when layered on top of each other, can create different shapes. The whole video is very psychedelic, which matches with the sound of the song.



The song itself is fast-paced, but the video moves along fairly slowly. But there are so many details in the video that it works nicely in keeping with the song. The video really works to accentuate the themes of the song.

Kids - MGMT

In January of 2008, a music video for the song Kids by MGMT was posted to YouTube by user jsalmon. It involved a boy and a girl, faces painted, dancing to the song, and clips from old shows of people dancing.

 

A few months later, in April, jsalmon was contacted by Ray Tintori, who has directed several official videos for MGMT. Tintori invited him and his two actors to be in the official video for MGMT's song Electric Feel.



Jsalmon's video has received more views so far than MGMT's own official video for Kids (which was released in 2009), and it is the first to show up in searches for the song. It's crazy how huge this video has become, and even more crazy what came out of it. The Internet is the best place to become well known for doing something awesome, because it is the fastest. We truly have the setup for Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame."

Exodus Damage - John Vanderslice

John Vanderslice's song Exodus Damage has a very good video. It was filmed with old film video cameras, and it uses time-lapses and also occasional still film shots. It tells a mysterious story that follows a young man (it looks as though it was in the 1990's), roaming around with his iconic Leica, taking photos of large buildings.



The old style of filming goes nicely with the sound of the song. Both the video and the song are very crisp - they have the same feel. And the look of the video clips (and the occasional still photos) - lots of dark black colors against moody colors - emphasizes the darkness of the lyrics. The song is full of creepy, dark things, but masked with a bright melody. The look of the video really enhances that.

Project For Awesome / Good vs. Bad of the Internet

On December Seventeenth, Youtubers are taking over YouTube... for charity.

Inspired by the Vlogbrothers, December Seventeenth is the day of the Project for Awesome. On this day, millions of YouTubers, most of whom are nerdfighters or who associate with nerdfighters, post videos about charities. They all use the same symbol in their descriptions. Then everyone involved rates everyone else's videos with five stars. This accomplishes two things: it breaks YouTube's algorithms, which is fun; and it makes people aware of many good charities.

One thing that always seems to be true about everything is that there is a bad side and a good side (this concept is similar to the idea of "looking on the bright side" except that I am more cynical and creating large groupings of events and ideas). In this example, The Project for Awesome is the good side of YouTube. The bad side of YouTube is the idiocracy and vulgarity of some of its content. Every time a new internet site is made, it can either be good (and useful) or bad (and stupid). Twitter is working itself out right now. Sometimes Twitter is a stupid means of hyper-individualism. But other times, Twitter is a great resource for instant communication. Twitter can be used well if people decide to do so. Everything can either be good or bad, and that identity is always changeable.

The Tracey Fragments

Sometimes life is a little bit broken.

In the movie The Tracey Fragments, which is based on a book, Ellen Page plays a depressed, mixed up teenager. In the film, she is looking for her younger brother, whom she has hypnotized into believing he is a dog. This movie is bizarre and depressing, but its editing is incredibly noteworthy.

Most movies show you one thing at a time, but The Tracey Fragments is not like most movies. The stage is fragmented, showing bits and pieces of clips at a time.

The entire movie looks like this, and I think that the fragmented clips help add to the movie's main theme. Tracey is a fragmented girl, a little bit crazy, and the editing helps show that. Also, having a film be split into pieces lets more things be shown at once, and it gives the final piece more replay-ability. You can't watch the whole screen at once. You have to move your eyes around, deciding which spot is best. It's almost like a puzzle.

Something like this would have never been able to be done with film. Having the film be digital is the only way that a stage can be split into so many fragments at the same time. But even still, this must have been a terribly difficult movie to edit.