One band, one album, three video concepts

If The All-American Rejects got a screenplay out of me, My Chemical Romance got the equivalent of three and a half screenplays that I still intend to draw someday, and those were specifically from a video:

http://ficwad.com/story/207019

The writing mainly came from "Sing", and my reaction to the ending, but "Sing" goes with "Na Na Na"; they are a pair.

Na Na Na: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IU

Sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTgnDLWeeaM

There were initially supposed to be three Killjoys videos, but despite hiring friends for the shoot, using the same costumes, and there being a lot of merchandising potential, they could not afford the third. There are nonetheless four videos from Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.

First of all, we have that old standby, the performance video. That sounds like it could be a lame thing, but they did it better than that. While they had just been touring, getting great footage from a full concert hall can be difficult. Either the cameras are in the way, or things are too remote, or something can go wrong. You can set up a special performance in a smaller space, but then you can lose the energy of a concert.

The band got around that by inviting fans in London to a special show, and basically giving them a concert. There is incredible energy, and there is some creative editing too, but mainly it looks great and captures the feel of the song.

Planetary (GO!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvfNmXbVHi4

There is also a good article about it at http://indulge-sound.com/2011/03/01/review-my-chemical-romance-planetary-go-video-shoot/.

There is another option when you are trying to assemble a video at a low cost, and that is assembling clips. Where this gets really amazing is that they found a fan compilation from Emily Eisemann that they liked, and worked with her. For that story, visit http://www.mychemicalromance.com/blog/frank/kids-yesterday-music-video.

The Kids From Yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXiLHIYqb_Y

The song itself has a reflective, nostalgic, looking back feel, so clips covering them from their early days to now is very fitting, and then with it being their last video before breaking up, it is poignant and perfect.

There are a lot of ways to do videos right, and My Chemical Romance is a very reasonable band to study for that, but I like that they ended by collaborating with a fan. Tomorrow I want to focus more on where you can go with that.