Flickr
Before you do anything else, make sure you’ve watched Jonathan Coulton’s original Flickr video. None of this will make any sense until you’ve seen it (and even then, who knows?).
“Flickr” was another one I wasn’t planning on doing. Heck, it’s just a slideshow, not even a real video. And the song’s already got a video done by JoCo himself, so it sure doesn’t need another one from me.
But then I got an email from a fan named Kytyn who really wanted me to do it. I explained all the reasons why I wouldn’t (mainly that I had no idea how I’d get some of the shots, like of Warren Beatty and a balloon man and such). She came back with a list of ideas for shots, and I told her “maybe”…
Then the folks on Coulton’s forums started talking about making their own version of the Flickr video using photos they had all taken themselves. The more they talked about it, the more fun it seemed, so I finally sat down to make my own WoW version.
Let me tell you, these slideshow videos are the way to go! Way easier to make than a normal video. But don’t worry. I won’t be abandoning my normal type of videos any time soon.
For those of you who have no idea what the heck this “Flickr” video is all about, it goes like this — back in 2005, Jonathan Coulton poked around on Flickr.com, found some photos he liked, and made a song and video about them. It’s purposely random. And he could legally do this because the Flickr photos were licenses under Creative Commons just like his music is, so the synergy was undeniable.
Without a doubt, the most difficult shot to get for the video was the balloon man. I mean, what the heck am I supposed to do for a balloon man in WoW? There are no balloon men. There are bubbly slimes, but they’re not men. There’s the goblins who stand next to the zepellins who I suppose are technically some kind of balloon men, but not really. My sister-in-law came up with the best runner-up suggestion of having a guy be surrounded by a bunch of the big spherical eyeball beholder-like monsters from Outlands. But in the end I went with a Draeni surrounded by paper airplane zeppelins, which I didn’t even know was in the game but I swear they are. Apparently you can get a loot card from the collectible card game that lets you get little paper airplanes you can throw to your friends, and there’s a little paper gyrocopter and a little paper zepellin. Hence, the balloon man is having too much fun. 