We won't dance, we won't sing, we won't talk / We just gonna watch how it bends

May 22, 2009 1:53 PM

Mix one part music from indie-pop band, one part hand-drawn animation, and one part found 8mm film footage (mostly reels randomly bought off eBay without knowing the contents). Result: "Sunlight" music video (hosted on vimeo), inspired by said track from the band Harlem Shakes. [via mefi projects]
posted by filthy light thief (6 comments total)

I liked that. Took me back to when making music videos wasn't a fully-defined genre yet, and people just tried making an interesting short film to accompany their song.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:36 PM on May 22, 2009

Wow, didn't expect my video to make it to the Front Page. Glad you guys liked it. The music video genre has an amazing potential for exploring the relationship between image and sound, but, of late, most videos strike me as relatively insipid. 90% of the time I wonder if the director has even listened to the song, as the connections between the video and the music (thematic, rhythmic, stylistic) are tenuous to nonexistent. I was trying to make a video that matched the Shakes' Brooklyn-indie-pop-meets-50s-doo-wop-meets-90s-rock vibe - which, given that my work is usually about nostalgia, was a heck of a lot of fun.

I could ramble on about the making of my video for pages, but instead let me share a conversation I had, countless numbers of times, over the three months that I was working on the video:

Friend: So, what are you working on these days?
Me: I'm doing a video for the Harlem Shakes - it combines my hand-drawn animation with some 8mm found film footage.
Friend: Oh, you mean like the A-Ha video?
Me: ....
Me: No.
posted by TheRoach at 1:05 AM on May 23, 2009 [2 favorites]

I really liked the over-all style of the video with the music, especially the selective use of color, and thought it would be a fun thing to share on a Friday.

Have you thought of posting the source videos somewhere? Or maybe putting together a making-of video?
posted by filthy light thief at 8:46 AM on May 23, 2009

I really like this. A lot. Thanks.
posted by makabampow at 10:49 AM on May 23, 2009

Heh, it never even occurred to me that there would be enough interest in the piece to warrant a making-of video. If you'd like to hear more about how I put it together, though, just grab my email from my profile - I could discuss it in more depth than you could ever possibly want.

As for the reels themselves, I'd be happy to share 'em. You can download the full source videos here:

Reel 1 (1:43) - I only took one short clip from this - the christmas tree shot in the second half of the video

Reel 2 (13:45) - The second half of this video is where I got all the train footage.

Reel 3 (36:36) - Everything else. The video records an anonymous family's trip to the Florida Keys. I quite liked the fortuitous match between the song "Sunlight" and the Sunshine State.

The versions I put up for download are quick h264 compressions, so they're still pretty big (the last is about 800 MB). I'll try to put a more reasonable sized version up tomorrow night - so those interested might want to wait until then to download.
posted by TheRoach at 12:46 AM on May 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

Harlem Shakes is good music.
posted by JackarypQQ at 7:29 PM on May 24, 2009