Weet je wat ik wil?

[davidn]

Oh, for goodness' sake, Heavenly. I just found this:

Video for the unusually-cased Heavenly - FullMoon

It follows pretty much the same traditions as the album cover (yes, don't look at it at work). Could you be any more French? Honestly. However, the new... visual approach seems to be working, if the number of comments along the lines of "I've no idea who they are, but I like them already!" is anything to go by.

There's also one for Lost in Your Eyes, which is very sort of firework Bohemian Rhapsody-styled, but I really don't think that the Eyes in it are what they were hoping viewers would be lost in.

Even though the production values here are higher than average, this is really sort of embarrassing. And now the lyrics make less sense than ever.

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

Is the subject a reference to French Erotic Film?

[davidn]

Yes! And one that I regretted on the grounds that nobody would get it. Clearly, I underestimated my Friends list :)

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

I don't have a musical vocab, but the first bit at :42 is nicked from Hunting High and Low, right?

[davidn]

You know, I'd never noticed that, but it does sound very Stratovarius-like (at the point around the year 2000 when they were good).

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

It's the only Stratovarius song that I know.

[kjorteo]

Could you be any more French?

Yes, but don't watch that at work due to breasts and furries (well, a kobold-looking thing, anyway) and vore.

[davidn]

Yes... that's Frencher. But where on earth did you find that? The curious thing about that list is that two of them would be entirely unremarkable if not phrased like that...

Something I love about the above video in particular is just imagining the idea first being presented - "Lads, I've got a great idea for what we could get done to us in a music video..." (Except in French)

[davidn]

Actually, I just want to sum this up here for the benefit of everyone concerned - I thought I had a reputation for finding weird Internet things when I was posting on my university's message boards, but here I offered a video that had some music and breasts in it, and you managed to come back with another offering those two facets and an iguana playing the ukulele.

[kjorteo]

It was making the rounds a long time ago--it had the perfect combination of a genuinely charming, clever, and creative animation style and ukulele-playing iguana vore to have been popular.

Seeing someone else who had an icon of it prompted me to search for it again, and while "that one French video with the kobold-thing and breasts" is whatwasthatone material if ever anything was, that person's icon info sourced it well enough that I could track it down myself, and commit it to memory in case I ever needed it again (like just now!) Well, sort of. There's no way I'm actually going to remember the song title since it's in French, but I do know it's from Monsters in Love, and every time I need it, I can just pull up the tracklist and go "oh yeah, that one."

[kjorteo]

Anyway... ouch. I don't know what to say about Heavenly's direction, here, aside from the fact that not since pre-"of Fire" Rhapsody has such brilliant music been saddled by such terrible videos. And even they had the decency to make their videos terrible in the good (hilarious) way, whereas this is just... uncomfortable.

On the other hand, perhaps Lost in Your Eyes is merely what would have happened if Rain of a Thousand Flames actually had a budget that involved a third digit....

Edit: Wait, does their stripper suddenly reach critical mass in the AAAAA AAAAAA AAAAA AAAAAA AAAAA part?

[kjorteo]

Among other things!

[davidn]

Of silicone? It wouldn't surprise me. Those are practically Wingeresque.

I notice that the discomfort didn't prevent you from watching it all the way through ;) No, I know (and experienced) exactly the uncomfortable feeling you mean, and I recall that you used the same word for a very similar kind of scenario in a different band's video... I want to say Vanishing Point because I only remember that it was one that we don't usually talk about... but I'm not sure of what it was, now. That video was more intentionally meant to be uncomfortable than these ones were, though.

No special effects were necessary for Ben Sotto during the last chorus - that's just what happens when he sings.

[kjorteo]

You're thinking of "Innocence" by Shaaman, AKA Exhibit B in the "Andre Matos never gets to keep the name when a band he co-founded splits, ever" tour. (He very wisely chooses to just release albums under his own name now, but mark my words, if his band splits up again, they're going to find some sort of way to be Andre Matos without him and he'll have to come up with yet another thing to call his subsequent act.) But yes, the discomfort is very deliberately invoked there, shot in a very grainy black and white style to further the overall message of the video, which I'm pretty sure is something along the lines of "when you grow up, you lose your innocence, and find out that the world is cruel and cold and uncaring and everything sucks" Or something. Thank goodness Kamelot doesn't do covers, or we'd be in trouble.

[davidn]

Yes, that's definitely the one - strange how the videos can provoke the same feeling despite their incredible differences in intended mood. I should mention that on watching Lost In Your Eyes again and with the distractions having become... expected, I was impressed by the Derek Stiles gesture at 3:33. Some of the video's effects in general are really good, it's just that they're put among such chaos (and the Queen references could hardly be more obvious!)

I had been trying to think about power metal videos that were actually... good, and coming up completely blank - apart from that Shaaman one, and Kamelot's aren't exactly bad, either. You already know that Blind Guardian's Bard's Song is also wonderful in its simplicity, and... just not including outerspace wars in general. They're all certainly far above the sort of Adobe Premiere home video quality of most of them, and all for comparatively solemn songs - perhaps true art is depressing after all.

and the man with a good set of priorities says

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

.... since when does Youtube allow nipples? o.o

[kjorteo]

Let's see... Blind Guardian somehow successfully made a good film noir detective-style video for Another Stranger Me. Within Temptation (surprisingly enough, since this is the same band and same album that gave us the ridiculous Angels video) did a nice little tear-jerker video for Memories. (The only thing at all wrong with it the fact that the morphing technology between old and young Sharon is slightly below the lofty standards set by Willow, but that only happens once each in the beginning and end of the video, and everything else is solid.) Flag in the Ground is also decent by power metal standards.

Hmm... also, I guess Sonata Arctica gets credit for Paid in Full, even though it's nothing but one giant band shot. This is because I have seen bands try to make "nothing but one giant band shot" videos and somehow manage to mess even that up, through things like questionable costumes and set design or questionable facial hair.

Also, Ben Sotto will save this patient!!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

psst hey what part are you guys talking about

*not at all creepy dude hanging around*

[kjorteo]

THE PART WITH THE NUCLEAR STRIPPER OF COURSE

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

.. okay, that was freaky. XD

IT'S AS THOUGH THEY'RE ACTUALLY TRYING TO MAKE AN ARTISTIC STATEMENT OR SOMETHING INSTEAD OF JUST SHOWING TITTIES, WHAT'S UP WITH THAT

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I hope the icon wasn't this, because this is totally my new one. <3

(oh who am I kidding, I'm never gonna use it :X)

[davidn]

I love the name you came up with for that :) That was one of my favourite parts of the whole thing, seeing where his hands go immediately...

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

And how totally fine she is with that. X3 Yes. ^^

[davidn]

That part sort of reminded me of a Bond film credits sequence, but not as subtle (and that's really saying something). I'm not sure what the artistic statement might be, but any pretence at an attempt to express anything at all there has already been nullified, I feel!

Re: and the man with a good set of priorities says

[davidn]

A good question - and I've no idea. The music uploads for this album, with its cover, have also survived, but on the other end of the scale, I once noticed an episode of Eurotrash was there, and unsurprisingly it didn't last very long.

[davidn]

The "by power metal standards" part is what worries me! I have a paranoid feeling that most videos in this genre are so appalling that I've become desensitized into thinking that the ones that nudge their way into "all right" territory are really good. But to my eyes, at least, the first four that you mentioned are some of the best of the bunch, even if I have a nagging feeling that other people might find the acting of Flag in the Ground rather corny and that Tony Kakko is continually reeling about like he has a severe inner ear balance problem.

[davidn]

I just attempted a Google translation of the title, and it came up with "Your laces are fairies". I suspect this is wrong.

[davidn]

And you can still bluff your way like a professional :) This is honestly helped by them all really being just one large band that swaps their members around every few years.