I Might Not Be Gay, BUT I Am Proud!

Less than a month ago, I put up a video blog (or vlog if you will) on here, it’s a music video that some friends and I made to the WEEN (best band you probably have not heard of) song “Boy’s Club”. So it’s been on my blog and on YouTube about a month now and it’s not getting the critical praise or internet traffic I was hoping for (I didn’t want to get ahead of myself when writing, directing, acting and editing the video, but I thought it was my ticket out of the stink hole town I call home… hopefully getting me discovered by Hollywood so I could move out there and personally Curb Stomp Edward Norton Out of Hollywood)…

After we made the video, I discovered that the concept of making a video to Boy’s Club was not original and there are two other YouTube videos (both by the same user, whose name I’ll bring into this little ordeal later on). OK, I understand that there are other guys out there that like the band WEEN, guys who like making music videos, and guys who just like to have fun… I get that, but the problem that I have is when my artistic endeavors are better than, BUT not as popular as. Get the picture?

The Boy’s Club video in question is a product of YouTube user “cmxpunch“, which I’m not really sure what the name means, but I’m sure he’s not as satisfying or thirst quenching as the best punch out there… Hawaiian Punch! But anyway… their first boy’s club video is called “Boy’s Club 2.0″ and was put on YouTube May 29th, 2006, THEN one year later the same user puts up another (suspiciously similar, but different) video called “Boy’s Club”.

See the problem? Even if you aren’t a rocket scientist, you’ll easily notice that… they have got the titles all backwards, and even if the first title was supposed to be cleaver… it has nothing to do with “software” which is commonly referred to with versions 2.0, 3.0, and “beta”. Plus, why would you have a 2nd version precede a first version?

So is there anything good about their 2.0 version? Not really. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but are shirtless men funny? Well, maybe Marlon Brando shirtless is funny, but Brando is dead and so is their comedic touch to an otherwise funny song that they made the video to. The other “comedic” touch (and I’m using the term loosely because I know humor is subjective and some people find comedy in unfunny, or in the case of this video, very unfunny, things) they put in their video is a couple guys pushing around another guy in a wheelbarrow to the edge of a pool and dumping him in. Ohh, I got ahead of myself, the video takes place almost entirely around a pool in a backyard. The only indoor scene they have is a lip sync (Mili Vanili did it first and did it better) to the song around some ice cream and some blue balloon whippets.

Ok, I tried to describe the awfulness of this, but it’s not coming across in words… here’s the video.

Pretty bad… huh? Regular readers of this blog know me as a tee-totaler and have probably already guessed at how outraged I am with all the drinking references (I counted out over 10 incidences of beer can in hand)… I mean, if you are going to be drinking in a video you are making… make sure you use the best beer on the planet, Coor’s Light… or at least use the marketing portion of your tiny little brains and make some money off of the video through product placement (not to say I’m better than “cmxpunch” at marketing… but this blog is sponsored by Coor’s Light and I get a kick back ever time their name is mentioned or someone clicks on a Coor’s Light link to their website).

And an even bigger problem I have is that the two of these “cmx” Boy’s Club videos have combined over 10,000 YouTube views? I mean WHAT? Over 10,000… that’s as many views as their are people in Hope, Arkansas! And the Boy’s Club video I made has less than 300 views… you can’t even get an “Unincorporated” sign outside of your town with less than 300 people. So “cmxpunch” how did you do it? How did you get so many people to watch? Or should I say, how many (9,999 clicks) times did you click your own video and admire you and all your friends without their shirts on? I’m not accusing you (again 9,999 click) of anything here but it seems a little suspicious to me. But then again I’ve been wrong before and thinking about it a little longer, I realize that in this modern age some men’s correctional facilities have internet access and I’m sure that you and your friends are good mental masturbation material for prisoners with all your splishity-splashity shirtless action.

I’m not going to say that the video my friends and I made is a work of art. But I’m going to put the two of these videos up on the same blog… you know, put them side by side, put them both under the microscope and see what happens. Here’s the video we made:

So, how do they compare? Well, I guess it’s like watching the “cmxpunch” video (Pauly Shore-ish) which is  average, next to my video (Orson Wells-Citizen Kane-ish) which is also average.

(Very SIDE NOTE: For those blog readers out there wanting to get a little better picture of me. I am acting in the second video. I’m the one with the longer brown hair and in the baseball sequence the one in the short-short hot pants (I know, ladies, take a drink of cold water, maybe take a cold shower and calm yourself down)!)

I’m not going to critique my own (better) video, but I am going to compare it side by side to the other (lesser) “cmxpunch” video. I said earlier that most of the “cmx” vid takes place in a backyard/pool area… well, the WEEN song is a little over 3 minutes long, and you expect your viewers to watch dudes around a pool for 3 minutes? No thanks, I’d rather watch a lot more things going on in 3 minutes (like, I don’t know, how about tent forts, MAD magazines, baseball, see-saws, football, basketball, the game of Operation, roid rage, and tin can telephones).

Sure, the “cmx” vid has a special effect (if you want to call it an effect by running the film backward, special) of having a guy in a pool somehow “magically” go from pool to diving board… yeah, we get it, it’s supposed to go the other way around… pretty lame effect. The video we made didn’t have any special effects, it didn’t need any. The kind of actor/filmmaker I am is very old school, very Buster Keaton, very Charlie Chaplin… you probably noticed the great prat falls – no stuntmen were used in the fight scenes (did it all ourselves).

Then comes the matter of how the film is put together. In the industry it’s called editing. Something that “cmx” is obviously NOT familiar with. There was absolutely no coherence at all to that video. We see a pool, then we see a dog, then we see a skateboarder… where did all this come from? As a viewer, I’m lost. The job of a film editor is to put scenes together flawlessly so that the viewer knows what is going on. The video my friends and I made did just that. AND I know what you are going to say right now… what about that basketball sequence where the editing is all messed up (really, the same people passing “the rock” to each other over and over to a layup shot?). Well, I knew you were going to ask that question and all I’ve got to ask you is: are you even familiar with a little movement called French New Wave Cinema? You know, a little time and place in the 60s when the likes of great filmmakers Francois Truffaut and Godart challenged the norms and idea of cinema through editing … didn’t know that? Well then, maybe you shouldn’t be anywhere near a film camera.

Now to be fair, I’ve deconstructed “cmx” pretty good, but I really haven’t given him a chance to defend himself. Every great debate needs two sides and I’m being pretty one sided here. So my solution is that I’m going to post a link of this blog as a comment on his video… hopefully he reads it and when he gets to this part of the blog, he will know that I AM PUTTING FORTH A CHALLENGE TO HIM (or if it’s you “cmxpunch” reading this – YOU)! That’s right “cmxpunch”, get in contact with me and I’ll challenge you to a music video making contest. You pick the song (ANY SONG) and deadline as to when the video should be finished… both will be put up on YouTube and fight to the death… the challenge is on “cmxpunch“. I leave it in your (shaky camera) hands!

This blog and video challenge has been brought to you today by the refreshing beverage: ‘Coor’s Light‘ Beer. Drink/Click Responsibly.

~ by Rand McTally on July 12, 2008.