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:
And
here is the unofficial one:
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.
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