To date, my only excursion into music video. Recently, I find myself starting to trend away from love tunes toward social commentary. This music video explores the increasing violence in our society, specifically school shootings.
 
A bit rough and somewhat quirky.
 
Enjoy, comment or critique as you wish.
 
 Who Ya Gonna Blame?
 
A sorry soul lies all alone in deep-red shame.
He was nothing special - not to praise, nor disdain.
Open his yearbook - seems that we all look the same.
Our faces all alike, we just have different names.

The evening anchor says: "Perhaps he was not sane".
Then shows us footage; All the people in all their pain.
Some call him "loser", looking for a fleeting fame.
Some shout a ring of fire will surly douse the flame.

Who Ya Gonna Blame?

Night watches, candle-lit. Dark night creeps over day.
On the walk the newsmen talk; They have nothing to say.
We all know this three-ring show is how they earn their pay.
Then it all repeats, another town another day.

Who Ya Gonna Blame?
 

Good song! Great hookline, that works a treat with the horns, guitar riffs and timpani, very memorable. The verse lyrics are hard to make out though, the vocal treatment might be clouding things a bit there.
 
The vid was well done, but a little confusing to me. It seemed almost comedic at times, which felt at odds to the message.
 
Overall though, I enjoyed that, good stuff.

jamesg1213
Good song! Great hookline, that works a treat with the horns, guitar riffs and timpani, very memorable. The verse lyrics are hard to make out though, the vocal treatment might be clouding things a bit there.
 
The vid was well done, but a little confusing to me. It seemed almost comedic at times, which felt at odds to the message.
 
Overall though, I enjoyed that, good stuff.

Thanks for the reply, Nettlesmith.
 
Others have told me the vocals are a bit muddled. I will be returning to this forum with this and maybe other tunes of mine looking for more technical mixing suggestions in the near future. I generally feel that I have problems with the stereo image in general - panning and part definition. I wonder if it because many of my songs follow a "Wall of Sound" approach that makes individual part definition all the more difficult. The video is closed-captioned, but I know that is no solution for lack of clarity.
 
As to the tone of the video - I hear you. I tried very hard to not make the song or the video a downer, specifically because the subject certainly is. I wanted the tune more upbeat, and the video ironic without being too flip. A tough task, but I think I did okay. I give myself a grade of "B", but others might think otherwise.

First off, pretty catchy, especially the chorus. I enjoyed your guitar work and riffage extremely. 
 
I thought the video was thoughtful, and I'd agree, it's hard not to interpret it as a little campy at times, but I wasn't bothered by that, I kind of enjoyed a campy version of a pretty serious topic. Call it blasphemy. You know, the "Press" pass was handwritten. There is no way that's not kinda campy!
 
I'd love to know what video editor you used?
 
So, nice job, it obviously took you a long time to get that many edits together. Not that anyone else's personal taste should guide you - you are doing your own thing and kudos!!! - but I found the horns being visually featured so much a bit of an overkill.
 
Did I imagine that the guitar in the first shot had only five strings?
 
Anyway, it's a well-written and catchy song, nice job! Keep up the good work.
 
cheers,
-Tom

emeraldsoul
 
 
 
Did I imagine that the guitar in the first shot had only five strings?
 

 
I was going to mention that too...

Thanks for the comments, emeraldsoul.
 
The video was shot using a Canon VIXIA HF R10 camcorder. I edited with Adobe Premier Elements. The cartoon-style art was done using Gimp, hand-animated within PE. I made all the sets by hand, and all the performers are me. Some of the "camp" was intentional, and some the product of exhaustion :)
 
The Premier Elements project has about 38 separate tracks. I can't even begin to count how many individual clips. I shot the footage many, many times from various angles and distances. The video makes extensive use of greenscreens...and greenscreens of greenscreens. Some of the clips - such as the horn break and the Gimp animation - are actually independent videos I made and then imported into the main project. I did this for 1. My personal sanity, and 2. To take some strain off of the application, which was getting slower and slower in rendering the video as the project got pretty massive.
 
It was a ton of work...more than one might imagine...but man, did I learn a lot!
 
And if you look closely, you will see the sixth string on the guitar :).