Major music videos start at around 40k to make. And what do most of them end up looking like? A couple of guys standing in a white room miming to Guitar Hero. A couple of thousand on some Microsoft Paint attempts at CGI and we're done. But no ones watches these things on TV anymore. So...thousands of dollars + guys in room = Youtube? Nevermind. Just take footage from someone else's million-dollar production, put your song over the top, and cop the accolades.
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Someone pulled together scenes from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti-western classic "Once Upon A Time In The West" and synced it up to Arcade Fire's slow-burner ‘My Body Is A Cage', to give the band their best video yet. The clip became a bit of a interweb sensation, making Yahoo News and even getting positive feedback from the band themselves. All thanks to some inspired editing and the matching of widescreen drama to the power of the song.
Boards Of Canada's wheezy electronica already lends itself well to the 'aged future' vibe of the "Tron"-era. Here their lifted-by-Radiohead 'Roygbiv' gets the treatment over a pastiche of early 80s UK TV adverts. The unknowing cast includes touch screens, body-rocking senior citizens, giant tyres and an awesome cartoon man turning human.
One of the by-products of linking up footage to an existing movie is that no-name's can hitch their wagon to a famous director. Without asking of course. The electrically-named LA band 'Health' put their short instrumental piece 'Heaven' under a sequence from German Director Werner Herzog's 1974 documentary "The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner". Similar to the Mogwai-scored "ZIdane" movie about the international soccer star, that featured little more than close-ups of a professional sportsperson in action, the clip lends considerable weight to the otherwise middling song.
Then there are the bad. Now what would make a video from execrable Russian faux-lesbian pop tweens T.A.T.U more enjoyable/insane? War footage. Filmed from your TV. Naturally.
I don't know A LOT about the requirements of being an international Hip-Hop star, but I'm pretty sure looking like you're rapping in time to your own song is high on the list.
And finally, Evanescence are a meaningful band. Powerful. Em0$huNal even. Set to slowly fading photos the sadness washing through you right now could power the broken dreams in a footy-trip dorm room. Somehow the moment is lost each time a 'COPYRIGHT' or 'ISTOCKPHOTO' with a big cross through it pops up though...don't ya think?