Unofficial videos

Building on some of the previous concepts of what makes a good video, and having the video fit the song, I have another case where an unofficial video is superior to the official one.

There are a couple of differences between this and the videos for "Just What I Need". First of all, I suspect that the Rufus King version of the video was made as an afterthought, either while they were broken up, or reconstructed several years later from existing footage. In addition, the fan videos for that are primarily using professionally filmed footage.

This can be where we get into a tricky area. Some of my favorite videos are fan videos where they combine a good song with footage from movies, television, or video games. This means that they can be removed for copyright violations on either the sound or the images. Sometimes the images will be left up without the sound, which does not work at all. Sometimes the whole thing is pulled down, but may reappear later.

Most people are pretty good about including disclaimer information that they do not own the properties involved, but I am not sure that it helps. While on the one hand it is good advertising, and I have become interested in many of the shows and songs used, it is normal that the content owners are going to want page hits and views to go to them.

Because of that, I am a little reluctant to draw attention to this one unofficial video, but it's just so good!

Here is the official video for "Summer In The City" by Freedom Fry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnQaDvGTq8M

And here is the unofficial one:

http://vimeo.com/88019639

I think the first point in it's favor is that it has a much stronger vision. I suppose it captures the song better in some ways merely by taking place in the city rather than at the beach, which tends to be out of the city, but otherwise the official one is very flat.

The lips thing they have going on doesn't really make sense. It feels thrown in to have something different going on, but that's the kind of gimmick you use to compensate for insufficiency.

To be fair, I don't love the end of the unofficial version when she is lying face down, because that feels kind of thrown in too, but they were apparently just making the video for fun, and under those circumstances people can get a bit silly.

(If I were making something like this as an official video, I think I would just have the camera cut away and return, but she is gone - suddenly disappeared like a summer storm.)

However, before that you have visual interest with different textures. I especially love the use of water. There are very mundane things like the bus and the sign listing tacos and pastrami, and there are more fanciful things like the house that she gazed at through the bars, and the flower petals. Mainly I am impressed by the sense of joy that comes through, especially because on reflection, being wet and barefoot was probably physically uncomfortable at times.

The micro lesson from this is that the people involved in the unofficial video -- Mike Dempsey, Jess Dunlap, and Colleen Allison -- are absolutely people that I would hire if I needed some filming done.

The broader lesson is, I guess, not to shoot a video just for the sake of shooting a video. Deciding that you are releasing a song and need a video is legitimate, but find a concept that really works for it. This may mean waiting for the right idea, listening to different pitches, and it can take a lot of improvising, but videos are not mandatory the way they used to be. If you are choosing to do it, then care about it. It's an extension of your song. Make it something that works.