« I Do It All Over. And You? | Main | I'm Busy... And Don't You Spoil The Ending!!! »
July 18, 2007
Machinima Music Madness!
The Ataris recently concluded a contest at Machinima.com that asked the machinima-making-masses to create music videos for three of their songs ("Not Capable of Love," "The Cheyenne Line," and "Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies") using the World of Warcraft game engine. It's a promo for the new Ataris disc, Welcome the Night, but to facilitate the promo, the band had to give away these three tracks. Since these three songs are, presumably, the tracks slated to be released as singles, that's an odd strategy. (You can still download the three tracks for free here.)
The contest is over now, and here are the three winners:
First Place: "Frame of Mind" by Sedrin
Second Place: "Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies" by Baron Soosdon
Third Place: "Connections Are More Dangerious Than Lies" by Dead Workers Party
I'd also like to draw your attention to one of the finalists that didn't make the top 3: Selserene's "To The Fairest"
You can compare Selserene's video with the official (i.e., featuring the band) Ataris video for "Not Capable of Love" at the iTunes Store. (Double-click on the song title to watch a 30-second preview.) I like the Blood Elf version better, I think.
Finally, for something not-completely different, the Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain have been confirmed to perform live at Blizzard's annual BlizzCon this year. Here you can sample the heavy metal goodness of "I Am Murloc!" (Warning: this video contains death-metal power chords, thrusting orc hips, and brief superhero-themed homophobic content.)
Anyway, what I'm most interested in with these machinima are the ways they depend (or not) on knowledge of the game for viewers/listeners to enjoy them. (And what should we call the consumers of music video? Listeners? Viewers? Multi-modal-mu-vid-mavens?) Sedrin's "Frame of Mind," for instance, is a critique of the tendency toward excess in the Achiever play-style (mentioned in yesterday's post, and then ably copped-to by Coeurlion in the comments). It's easy in WoW to get caught up in the race to level 70, and in the race to get the most elite weapons and armor. Sedrin shows us his avatar's Buddhist coming-out party, renouncing worldly goods and rediscovering friendship and that the world has color. If you've never yelled at someone for ninjaing loot, or been yelled at yourself for an innocent (we hope) mistake looting, does this video mean anything at all to you? Can it?
Baron Soosdon's video, on the other hand, seems like a pretty straightforward tale of lost love and zombie invasions. However, if you're a WoW player, you might have noticed the cross-faction romances of our main characters (Blood Elves are Horde, the Draenei are Alliance) -- a big no-no. And if you're a lore-junkie, you might have noticed the allusion to Horde Warchief Thrall and Alliance Mega-Mage Jaina Proudmoore, whose own forbidden love has been the subject of long speculation. Obviously, this isn't crucial knowledge needed to make sense of the video, but it does set up a clear dichotomy between what we might call naive and experienced readings of the video.
The Dead Workers Party video also makes use of in-jokes and references, such as the absurdity of playing World of Warcraft on an Atari 2600, itself an in-joke reference to the band's name, The Ataris. The video's concluding in-joke pokes fun at the difficulty in knowing who or what is on the other side of the often attractive avatars on screen.
And the L70ETC song, "I Am Murloc!" may be catchy if you're into that sort of thing, but if you've ever played WoW, it's an instant classic. Murlocs are irritating, little, deadly fish-people who swarm up to you and then make you into their own special fish-food du jour. Horde and Alliance both have quests that require navigating through Murloc-infested areas, and killing many, many Murlocs. Every WoW player knows the sinking feeling of doom when you're trying to get just one Murloc to attack and end up hearing the Murloc sound: "Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!" coming from 3-8 others, all heading your way with murder in their unblinking eyes. Can this song/video have the same impact on non-Wow-ers?
I don't have a conclusion to this ramble. That's usually a good sign that there is (or should be) a paper hiding three or four so-whats down the road. We'll see.
Until then, rock on!
Posted by reparent at July 18, 2007 11:05 AM