Iron Man, by
DeejayThis is my favourite. I watched it knowing nothing about Iron Man, and it inspired me to track down the movie, and now I love it even more because it's all true. The words and images and character and plot all seem to go together so perfectly. I particularly love
- the suiting-up scene with the swell of the music (incidentally, I think the construction of the suit provides a great structure to the vid, making it easy to follow the narrative even when unfamiliar with the source)
- the magazines at the end (contrasted with the magazines at the start)
- and that final flicker of his eyes.
Doctor Who, by
Seah and Margie (Flummery)This is approximately as awesome. That is, I do prefer the Iron Man one, but this seems to be more famous and even when I see people aware of both, they often prefer this, so. The song definitely suits the Doctor, too; maybe it's just that I'm a bit jaded about his angst in this respect, or maybe it's just that I saw the Iron Man one first. This one does probably have some more moments where it can be more literal - but then it really loses out in the "end the planet in a holocaust" lines where the vast majority of the explosions are caused by someone else, whereas Tony Stark gets to play a rather more active role in his flamethrowing etc.
West Wing, by
chailaThe nature of
The West Wing means this video is by necessity much less literal than the first two, but that doesn't mean it works less well thematically. And it's a fantastic parallel/contrast of, hmm! church vs state, with a lovely matching motif of Rose Window vs Presidential Seal.
Merlin, by
such heightsI've only ever watched one episode of Merlin, so don't have sufficient context. Given this, for me it's not as powerful as the others - I found it harder to construct it into a narrative the way I could with the Iron Man one, and it didn't help that the point of view goes back and forth between Arthur and Merlin. But it's interesting that, where the other versions have the final lines cycling back around, this has them shifting to the women, like it's the beginning of a new story.
White Collar, by
mouthmountI've managed to get myself obsessed by White Collar in the last couple of months, and this song fits Neal perfectly. This video unfortunately doesn't quite reflect that. Technically it's got moments where the timing's out, and the clip choice can be shaky - especially from about halfway through there's a lot of places where a clip's been chosen because it fits lyrics literally, but from the wrong point of view, so at best you lose the focus on Neal. (In particular, the "microphone" stuff -- there's plenty shots of Neal public speaking, albeit not with a microphone -- and "I can hit a target through a telescope" paired with someone else targeting Neal. I'd have used the clip of Neal skeet shooting instead -- that's used a bit further on but doesn't seem to really fit there.) However, there's bunches of lovely clips, like the ticking clock at "keep rhythm", the "make you want to buy a product", the "vaccinations/exasperation/laceration/assassination" series, and the flashback introduced with the explosions running backwards, and I
really like the way it uses the Parachuting Scene of Awesome for the start and end.
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( Spoilers for season 8 ep 11, the '3W' episode )
