When I met Jonathan Coulton the other night, he asked me how I chose what songs to make videos for. I gave him the short answer - I get ideas for videos all at once, while listening to the music. Those ideas get put on a list, and those that don’t seem too difficult to do get made. There were a lot of videos on that list that I never got to make, for various reasons. Some of those videos, and reasons, are included below:

Big Bad World One - I wanted to do this video musical style, set in an office where during the verses the main actor and 5-10 extras playing coworkers would brake out into song and dance. I was even considering having the actor sing the vocals, so it didn’t look weird lip synching to Jonathan Coulton’s voice. This video actually almost got made - Zach Valenti (who starred in Blue Sunny Day and Code Monkey) got me in touch with a choreographer friend of his, who offered to help plan the dance sequences (the reason I abandoned this video in the first place - I don’t know anything about dance). He was very committed to getting this video made… Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any dancers willing to participate, and I only knew one that was interested. My new choreographer friend wanted to try the video with just the one dancer, but I said I’d rather not do it than do it well, and pulled the plug on the project.

Re: Your Brains - An obvious one. Re: Your Brains is one of the big favorites. I wanted to shoot it in an office (same location as Code Monkey) even though the song technically takes place in a mall. I wanted to try a horror movie style - shaky camera, dark tones, high contrast, creepy colored tint… Unfortunately, I couldn’t find enough actors willing to wear zombie make up, and this project was canned as well.

Stroller Town - The song, if you haven’t heard it, is a Beach Boys style racing song about two babies in strollers. I wanted to shoot it 80s style - campy, colorful, ridiculous. Unfortunately, no access to strollers or babies. Crossed that off the list.

I Feel Fantastic - This one I had to actively try not to do. I love this song, and it seemed like such a fun video to make. The only reason I didn’t do it is because I knew the video I wanted to make had already been done. Any music video I made would just end up looking too much like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidiWe9yq88 and I wasn’t interested in repeating someone else’s tricks.

So Far So Good - I wanted to do this one halfway through Vid A Week, just because “So Far So Good” worked so appropriately as a title. I wanted to do a basic love story, where a couple meets, gets together, and breaks up over the course of days, weeks, or years. The gimmick was going to be that I was going to go through different film styles spanning through all of film history, starting at something like Chaplin and ending with something like Star Trek (the JJ Abrams one, with all of the lens flares and stuff). I didn’t get to this one just… ‘cause. I don’t know what happened. At one point it was going to be the video of the week, but my actors cancelled on me. I think after that I just gave up on it.

The Big Boom - A small band of survivors roam a postapocalyptic wasteland and do battle with monsters. I do not have anywhere near the special effects expertise that I’d need for a project like this.

Famous Blue Raincoat - I was going to do this one animated and artsy. Mostly long, “painted” looking images with small animated flares, like a flickering candle or darting eyes. I ended up doing Mr. Fancypants instead. I was not going to do more than one animated movie for Vid A Week.

The Future Soon - A friend of mine pitched me an idea for an animated version of The Future Soon. This is absolutely one of my favorite Jonathan Coulton songs, and I wasn’t able to get the idea out of my head. Originally, I wanted this to be my one animated Vid A Week, but the more I thought about, the more I realized it wasn’t going to happen in just one week. Maybe I’ll still come back to this one day, as it’s own project.

I’m sure there are more that I’m forgetting, but those are the big ones. The videos I wanted to make the most, the ones that drove me to start the project in the first place, all got made. I don’t regret not being able to do everything - when does that ever happen? - but I’m glad I get to post the other ideas, even if it’s just in paragraph form.