Day 7: Seven Music Vid's

The internet is full of witty, entertaining and moving videos - mostly on YouTube which has cornered the market as the defacto distribution network. I've scoured the airwaves for links to seven of the best Star Trek music videos and in the process met some interesting people and ended up in some strange places! It is by no means a definitive list think of this as the House of L'Stok's Playlist. To access the links go to our webpage at http://12daysxmas.thunderdownunder.org


The task of choosing seven music videos was not as easy as I thought! A superficial look at the scene makes it look like everything of note is on YouTube, and it's true - Youtube is a vast repository of material, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime!

Some contributors have many vid's that bear checking out. For example, I learned about Dangermouse14 from his cute and boppy DSN video, "Rom's Got It!" which celebrates everybody's favourite Ferenghi klutz who, like the songs say "You Got What It Takes" (the Dave Clark Five). When you click on the creators name you go to his YouTube homepage where I found that Dangermouse had more that was well worth watching: "Garak: Obsidian Order Man" and "Women of the Mirror Universe" all of which are Convention music video award winners.

Choosing the right music has a lot to do with making a music vid memorable. ElizabettGornRosh made a great choice with "Nobody does it better", performed by Carly Simon from the James Bond flick "The Spy Who Loved Me", as the perfect theme music for Enterprise's Action Man, Malcolm Reed.

Not all Music Videos are humorous or amorous. Some are sad and moving, such as "Enterprise, Baby Mine" put together by Flomuk and I defy anyone to watch enkratic's "Tribute to Scotty" with a dry eye! Again the eerie drone of the celtic music complemented the mood beautifully and this particular video is immensely popular, having had over 18,000 hits in the past year.

YouTube doesn't have an absolute stranglehold on music videos though. There are websites that specialise in music videos, for example Final Frontier Video, a Dutch site, Vic's Lounge on LCARS.com and CetiAlpha.com. For Enterprise fans, House of Tucker is still there with it's alter to the different 'shippers of that show. ST: Enterprise Lives is also there where you can still watch one of my personal favourites, HoloDarlin's "God bless the Broken Road".

The music video has morphed at times into a tool for popularising campaigns, as can be seen in the TU related category of the TrekUnited Video Center where you'll find some truly amazing work by Skippy2K and Cpt Pike. Taking a leaf from the studio's book, Geoff James, created a Klingon music video for his Machinima blockbuster "Borg Wars" ... although these ain't yo' Mama's Klingons!

The one who has impressed me the most recently though would have to be those done by Kinneas - Tony Tuthill - one half of the creative team that steers the UFP Devilfish through the virtual universe of Star Trek online ... or so they would like to believe! With Zach Nicodemous, Kinneas runs Hailing Frequency, a Star Trek Gaming podcast, one of the four that I featured on Day 4 of The Twelve Trek Days of Christmas. Kinneas is talented. not just with putting music and video together but, unlike most who use TV or Movie clips for their video, he is a talented graphic artist!

Ok, so the video is actually still graphics, created in Adobe Illustrator, that he has animated using good ol' Windows Movie Maker and a bit of Flash MX, but he is very, very good at it! So much so that there is very little "willing suspension of belief" needed to imagine them as moving video.

Tony's homepage on YouTube currently links to 18 of his videos, ranging from video issues of his fanzine ST:Oned to portfolios of his work and even an animated audio drama from the Christmas issue of Hailing Frequency! "Arthur Yoria: Strange Grin (v.2)" is my clear favourite from Tony, although "Captain Kirk, Gorn, Slime Devils and Scatterpacks" is a close second and he tells me that "Lemon Demon 's Telekinesis" is the public favourite of his music Videos.