Here's an idea.
The visual style of the animated GIF
is finding its way into the music video.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
First things first-- here on Idea Channel,
we tend to pronounce G-I-F as "zhaif."
But in the interest of being welcoming to newcomers
for this entire video that is about G-I-Fs,
we're going to pronounce it "giff."
And if you want to complain about "giff" versus "jiff,"
please do.
Just do it on this other video that we'll put a link to.
We'll put it over here.
And I just want to say that it pains my heart that we're
going to abandon "zhaif."
But it's only going to be for this video.
It hurts a little bit.
I think it would be fair to say that the animated
GIF is a prominent feature of contemporary visual culture.
The GIF is a big deal.
Tom Moody called it ubiquitous mini-cinema.
Anil Dash-- the pop music of moving images.
So perhaps it makes perfect sense
that the other place where cinema and pop music
coincide, the music video, has started
to incorporate some very GIF-like
characteristics-- some character-GIF-sticks.
I'm not talking about things like Evan Roth's awesome "Girl
Talk" video, made entirely out of animated
GIFs, or that Morena, "Tropkillaz" video,
but rather music videos which, in their editing,
either reference or stylistically
resemble the animated GIF.
This episode of Idea Channel will be different.
We're going to watch music videos together,
ones that I've picked to illustrate
this idea that the animated GIF has in some way
leaked into or inspired the visual style
of contemporary music videos.
And after watching them, we're going to talk about them.
So this video is really several videos.
It's a playlist, unless you don't want to be.
In which case, you can click on this annotation
or find the link in the doobly-doo
to a condensed version of this video, which is, you know,
less fun but probably more convenient
on certain platforms.
And a word of warning-- some of the music videos
we will be watching do contain adult material.
So PG-13, which you have to be 13 to have a YouTube
account anyway.
But you understand what I'm saying--
parental guidance suggested.
The first music video we'll watch
is for Adrian Sieber's "Round Round Song."
It becomes clear pretty quickly why we're starting here.
The GIF usage is explicit.
Sieber's video directly references
well-known GIF tropes and even a well-known GIF-making
collective.
Also the idea of the loop is the main thematic content
of his lyrics.
So yeah, enough pre-blabbing.
Let's watch.