The barriers of entry for making great DIY music videos shrink with every year – and half of the time, you don’t even need to have permission.
YouTube and Vimeo are awash with unofficial, fan-made videos, which can often surpass their official counterparts. Unfortunately, these videos are often taken down for copyright reasons, but in some cases they receive the support of the artist – and can become the first step of a promising career in official videos. FACT TV’s Luis Muñoz tracked down the creators of some of the best fan-made videos on the web, with Danny Brown, Flying Lotus and more as their muses.
This video for Crystal Castles’ ‘Plague’ was made by Ivan Grbin. A film student from Pula, Croatia, Ivan used climactic footage from Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 psychological thriller Possession. The film follows a woman through her destructive and unhinged relationship with her husband. If you haven’t seen it, it’s absolutely horrifying.
A couple of days after Ivan posted the video, Crystal Castles discovered it and shared it on their Facebook page. They liked it so much they made it the official video, though it was eventually taken down from YouTube for copyright reasons.
Ivan Grbin: “Mixing Possession with ‘Plague’ came spontaneously in my head before I even had the idea of editing it together. When I first heard ‘Plague’ it moved me in a similar way as the movie. It just felt cathartic for me. I uploaded it on YouTube, soon after it got big attention from blogs – two days later Crystal Castles’ manager asked me if I could cut the song and make it shorter”.
“He said that Ethan and Alice loved it and that they would like to make it official. I was surprised they would care about some fan music video. They’ve sent a link to distributors and magazines with a note to write my name as a video director. What more could I have asked for?”
This Flying Lotus video was made by French motion graphics animator William Le Bras. Weeks after Le Bras uploaded the video to YouTube it was removed, but not before Flying Lotus left him feedback, which Le Bras featured at the end of this Vimeo upload.
William Le Bras: “I’d been working for a year on a short film. We didn’t have any support at the beginning so it wasn’t easy. I just wanted to breathe and do something for myself. I made part of the dream like [how] real dreams works. I knew I wanted to do ice cubes falling down, but all the next steps after that were coming to me one by one. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, it was really fun.”
“I sent Flying Lotus a preview of the music video two months before releasing it. I wanted to know if he would like it. After a month without any answer, I sent him another message. He simply replied with three words: “cool video man””.
This rendition of Danny Brown’s ‘Grown Up’ was created by 32 year-old Brooklyn based graphic designer Steven Menegozzi. Inspired by the tune’s playful nature, Menegozzi based the video on Fisher Price sets.
Steven Menegozzi: “I had the idea to use these Fisher Price toy sets for a video project but wasn’t sure what. Then one day I was listening to ‘Grown Up’ and it felt like a great match to me. The song’s subject matter and the different toy sets seemed to lend themselves to each other”.
“Before I started making anything, I spent a lot of time blocking out shots and relating them to the song’s lyrics. And since 3D takes so long, I had a lot of time to improve and add things to the video. Danny Brown actually tweeted the video. I’m glad he saw it and liked it”.
We’re as confused as you are. Only a couple of weeks after Aphex Twin released ‘minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]’, the lead single from his latest album Syro, Warp Records shared this odd-yet-brilliant video from random a YouTube user named epic1:40d Gaming.
All we know if that the video was, apparently, made with iPhone app Video Star and that its young star is quite the Aphex Twin fan. Casually mysterious, it’s an example of fan-made music videos at their best.
