I appreciated the fact that Spoon didn’t try to pull off the camera sleight of hand that Nyle did, rushing musicians into place while the camera looked the other way. This is a totally picky point, I realize, but the effort has always distracted me in the Nyle video.

To Nyle’s credit, his song sounds like a live, one-take track: little breathy moments, some notes held a little too long or short, artists fading in and out organically, not by a volume slider. Spoon’s track, to my ears, is indistinguishable from the version I heard on the album. Great track, but an opportunity somewhat squandered.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

If you showed this to a group of students, would you have handed out the explanation before discussion? (Honest question, I know I wouldn’t and doubt you would.)

Seems like this would be ideal for something like that.

Unfortunately, it can also be done in a way that just frustrates folks when all you ever do is find the negative.

The trick is to do a lot of the former and avoid the latter. After all, if we look hard enough we can find fault with almost anything. To get better – to improve the quality of what we do (teach, administrate, make music, take pictures, direct videos…) we need to open our eyes to everything we can. Take it all in. And when something doesn’t sit well with us, we need to be able to articulate why it doesn’t work for us.

Heck – I was proud of myself that I even noticed anything in this video — even if I didn’t have any idea what I was noticing until I came here to comment.

I enjoy this kind of discourse very much.

Scott: And besides, I read this great blog where this kind of dissection is encouraged so I figure I’m learning!

Far be it from me to discourage nitpicking. Thanks for keeping it on message, people. Let’s do this again some time.

I agree with everyone that this was a pretty good video. Different, sure, but it was pretty smooth overall. Helps that it’s on Vimeo, too. Yet, I also see lots of people took exception to the young lady dancing at the end, and wondering whether it was a means of exploitation.

From my eyes, I say no, and the reason I say that is BECAUSE it’s in the same vibe as the rest of the video. It’s people just having fun. There’s a difference between a woman objectifying herself and a woman dancing sensually (and to add, she wasn’t even dancing scandalously). Now, if Nyle smacked her rear or swiped a credit card through it, I would completely agree with the point about objectification.

However, I saw that last dance scene as her just dancing. Now, it definitely struck me as odd much like it struck Scott as odd, but gratuitous? Not that much.