http://homepage.mac.com/a.yakovlev/KZ.html Krivie Zerkala (Crooked Mirrors) Z-Exit /w Tulskiy Pryanik (in Russian)
         

This is my first music video. Shot on Xl2 in W'sburg and Manhattan. I would like to hear what antvillers think :]

         

footage looks good.

concept is meh.... performance + walking around the city?

Russian rock is a tough sell - the dude's voice is terrible.

Love the mullet, though.

         

The dynamic between the singer and the girl borders on parody, it would have been great if that was intentional and played up. Definately looks good, is this 24p?

         

This is cool, but probably for unintended reasons. It was made very seriously but comes out as being a parody of videos from the 80s. It's as if Borat (one of the clueless characters created by Sacha Baron Cohen of "Ali G. Show" fame) directed his own "American style" video. The digital footage looks good indeed. Great control. But the 80s style (super cliché leather jacket, dark sun glasses and mullet) really make the whole thing a tad ridiculous -- a "tad ridiculous" only and not "completely ridiculous" as the singer is too scary to be made fun of (he'd probably kick my ass) and the girl too sexy, in an 80s-Russian-tele-novela way, to be easily dismissed. (Did the Russians actually have soap operas then? ... Doubt it) In other words, this video would probably play okay in some circles in Russia, but I don't think Europe and the U.S. are ready for yet another mullet attack.

         

ok im too lazy to look deep into this myself but is this a parody on kino and viktor tsoi or is this a complete ripoff?

         

honestly this is ridiculous... what is this shit?

         

this is the best music video I have ever seen! My office has put this at undisputed no.1 in the hall of fame! :) And also is in our contention for breakthrough video of the century + best song. Please post any other Russian rock videos we would genuinely love to see them! You seriously have made our day! x

         

Thank you for your comments. It's awesome to hear back from people that like this blog, since it is the best for music videos ever. To answer the questions:

-Definetly 24p, FCP though I got confused with the standard pulldown and 3:2:3:2 advanced or whatever and had to use Cinematools and do standard reverse telecine, so the end product might be stroby due to this, but I couldn't really tell the difference.

-In the 80's in Russia Latin soap operas were very popular and also Santa Barbara. Right now Russian TV (about 7 broadcast channels) has a ton of nationally produced "teleserials" - one is an amazing adaptation of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot."

-The concept was originally to be a bit of an homage to the legendary Russian Rock group Kino - the song is styled to their music, the performer does somewhat look and sound like Victor Tsoi, the frontman of Kino, who died in a car crash about 10 years ago. The semblance is subjective, but the thing is they never had a song called "Crooked Mirrors" and didn't make a music video in 2005 in New York on a videocamera for it. It definetly was not meant to offend the fans of Kino, and there is a pretty big movement of bands who sound like Kino in russia, my comparisons being here to all the jam bands that sound like the Dead.

-I'm really glad your office liked it! x right back at ya.

         

ok well then i dont see any point in this band, since it copies everything from kino. he doesnt just "somewhat looks and sounds like viktor tsoi", but he is a complete rip off tsoi. everything - the voice, the clothes, the haircut, the music... everything is the same.

         

veronica, veronica, veronica. too funny.