Mike Amin: Director and Collector of Digital Art

MTV article on my music video for Bang Bang Eche's "Nikee"

Posted by Mike Amin On 4/08/2010 0 comments

Just got some nice press on one of MTV's sites for my Bang Bang Eche music video "Nikee":

http://blog.mtviggy.com/2010/04/07/the-sweet-fan-made-video-for-bang-bang-eche

Here's the entry:

The Sweet Fan-Made Video for Bang Bang Eche

You know how sometimes the scrappy fan made video is better than the official video, which the label spent thousands on? Well, some music biz guys figured this out and launched genero.tv, which hosts contests for aspiring filmmakers to submit music videos that could, in turn, become the band’s official video and land them with a $2,000 dollar paycheck. Winners are chosen democratically, via online polls.

A still from Mike Amin's fan video for Bang Bang Eche's "Nikee" Photo Credit: YouTube

Recently, our favorite Australian dudes — Bang Bang Eche — got the Genero treatment for their track, “Nikee.” The winner was Mike Amin, who describedhis inspiration this way:

This video for Bang Bang Eche’s Nikee is a 2D rendering of kick-a$$ New Zealand rock. The black and white theme is a nod to the punk rock feel of the music, but with a low-fi technology edge reminiscent of 80s-era raster text (thanks to the synth). Both aliased and anti-aliased text combine and transform into living characters on-screen. Japanese emoticons also play a big role, as they are more expressive than the ones we’re used to in the west. Heavy influences include Shynola, Tim & Eric, Nintendo, and the greatest music video director of all time, Michel Gondry.

Oasis "borrowing" from other artists

Posted by Mike Amin On 3/30/2010 0 comments

Let's face it, Oasis is a seminal band of the 90's. They influenced a great deal of music during that decade, and continue to do so today. But when Oasis started, there was plenty of finger pointing (directed at the band), due to similarities between Oasis tracks and tunes that came before it.

Below is a comparative list of songs that Oasis has borrowed elements from. These are a few examples but not an exhaustive list by any means - I should also note that Oasis has been sued for most or all of these, so I'm not trying to unravel a major scam or anything - I'm simply posting in one convenient spot. On to the fun...

The first, most obvious example of Oasis taking a direct cue from the past: "Shakermaker" uses the basic melody from the old Coca Cola song, "I'd Like To Teach The World to Sing". You'll hear it right away...

Coke:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mOEU87SBTU

Oasis - Shakermaker (check the 0:31 mark):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUoVQ-kB7DQ

Another, very obvious one - "Cigarettes & Alcohol" taking the riff from T.Rex's "Bang a Gong (Get it on)" AND Humble Pie's version of "C'mon Everybody". I'm not going to get into how this also sounds a little like the Coke song. Again, you'll hear it in the first few seconds.

T.Rex - Get it on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVEhDrJzM8E

Humble Pie - C'mon Everybody:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKh2TBDu9L4

Oasis - Cigarettes & Alcohol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaeLKhRnkhQ

Here's yet another very obvious example - "Whatever" basically copying Neil Innes' "How Sweet To Be An Idiot".

Neil Innes - How Sweet To Be An Idiot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ9EWcaS7II

Oasis - Whatever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuPBrSl9Nw

How about more? Before it was officially released, (What's the Story) Morning Glory originally had a song called "Step Out" on it. Someone cried foul and noticed "Step Out" sounded like Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)". Take a listen and you'll hear that not only Oasis switch the horns for guitar, but compare Uptight (Everything's Alright) at 0:25 to Step Out at 0:55.

Stevie Wonder = Uptight (Everything's Alright):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDbyOLzEyfk

Oasis - Step Out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N98CFHq3KbA

A side note to the above - Stevie Wonder's song also sounds like the chorus of Green Day's coincidentally named "Uptight" (really? coincidental?). Take a listen at 1:16:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Vz52GyyWc

This one is most interesting and a little more subtle I think - Oasis' pivotal track "Live Forever" taking the melody from the Roling Stones' "Shine a Light". Listen to the Shine a Light chorus when Mick Jagger sings "may the good lord shine a light on you" at 1:05 and put it up against the Oasis line "Maybe I don’t really want to know" at 0:12.

Rolling Stones - (check 1:05):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPbozLRU3so

Oasis - Live Forever (check 0:12):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_2mWhfOhGU

And perhaps an appropriate note to close this post: I recently read that Noel Ghallager complained about Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" ripping off Oasis' "Wonderwall". His awesome quote:

"[Green Day] should have the decency to wait until I am dead [before stealing my songs]... I, at least, pay the people I steal from that courtesy.”

For those interested, this is perhaps another example of the decline of Green Day, which I did a lengthy post about here. With that, here is the comparison...

Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWNRUVMboq4

Oasis - Wonderwall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hzrDeceEKc

UPDATE - APRIL 21 2010:

My dear friend Dorothy pointed me to this Travis track for Writing to Reach You, and you'll know why after listening to the opening (and subsequent) chords:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeCcuH-EsuM

Interesting thing about this song is that not only does Travis use the chords from Oasis' Wonderwall, but they call out Wonderwall in the song! Great job. Looks like other artists haven't been oblivious to the fact that Oasis liberally borrows from others.

And bringing it all together, this video mashing-up Wonderwall, Boulevard of Broken Dreams AND Writing to Reach You:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES2NGj_fYjs

Thanks Dorothy!

Graph goodness: average Metacritic scores by video game console, by year

Posted by Mike Amin On 11/17/2009 0 comments

Most video game fans like myself rely on Metacritic to help establish whether a released video game is actually good or not. As I was looking at the latest score for Assassin's Creed II, I got to thinking: "I wonder what the average of the average is for the entire PS3 game collection on Metacritic?" I.e. if we tabulated all the PS3 games on Metacritic and averaged out the Metacritic score of each, what would it be?

I took this idea a little further and broke it out for all the major video game consoles, and compared them. I gathered all the info directly from Metacritic.com (they have full lists of their games and scores), and popped it into Excel. I omitted 2005 because the PS3 and Wii did not have Metacritic numbers posted those years (pre system-release). The results were interesting...

First up, let's look at the the average scores by platform, by year, with the highest scores by platform highlighted in orange.

	2006	2007	2008	2009
PS3	71	71.9	70	71.7
360	70	67	66	69
PSP	67	64	67	68
DS	62	62	63	67
Wii	63	60	61	65

As one can see in the table above, PS3 saw its highest average score back in 2007 and Xbox 360 was even further back in 2006! The PS3 score in 2009 so far (the numbers are only up to November 17, 2009) is only 0.2 points away from 2007, so if they were rounded up, the 2009 score would be the same as 2007, at 72. The PSP, DS and Wii all saw 2009 as being the best year for their respective software, but they trail the 360 and PS3. The delta between the 2009 PS3 and Wii scores is almost 7 points, which may not be surprising considering the different audiences the platforms are geared toward (PS3 is for hardcore gamers and Wii is family-targeted). Here is the graph of the above data:

Now let's check out the average of the averaged averages... i.e. the average of the scores shown above from 2006 to 2009:

	Total Average, 2006-2009
PS3	71
360	68
PSP	67
DS	63
Wii	62

What the above means is that from 2006-2009, PS3 has the highest-scoring games around - a perhaps a marginal 3 points above 360 but a full 9 points above the Wii. Here's the same data, in handy graph form:

Does this mean PS3 has the best games? Maybe, or maybe not. Differences like the target market I mentioned earlier are a factor to consider. For example, a professional game reviewer may disagree with say, my aunt, on whether a particular title is "good" or not, and the different systems speak to different people. A safe assertion to make is that technically PS3 has the highest-quality core-gamer titles out, but a 3 point difference between PS3 and 360 over 4 year period may not be enough of a difference to really say which system has better games. Additionally, I've maintained that PS3 and 360 appeal to slightly different audiences.

On a personal note, there are stellar games on ALL of the above systems, so it's hard to go wrong (although I am partial to my PS3).

analysis, console, data, ds, Games, graph, nintendo, playstation, PSP, wii, xbox

Bud Light Speaker Box - elaborate hoax or upcoming product?

Posted by Mike Amin On 10/27/2009 7 comments

An interesting commercial caught my attention when it aired on SpikeTV last night - it was a Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job-esque infomercial promoting a supposed new product from Budweiser call Bud Light Speaker Box. The product is purportedly a case of Bud Light (or "two-four", as my Canadian brethren would say) with a built-in speaker that you can plug your MP3 player into.

After it aired I went to YouTube to find the ad, but it didn't come up. Thinking there must be some mistake, I Googled it. No luck there either. All I found was one silent video of a rotating case:

Strange. Why would the ad not have been posted? I started scratching my head about this and did some digging. It soon dawned on me that something suspicious was going on with this product... mainly, that it didn't seem to actually exist. My Google results brought up tons of results, mainly of what appeared to be blog posts about the product. Thing is, I took a closer look at these blogs and I'm fairly certain they were set up by a marketing agency to hype the product. Examples:

ttp://momentumoffailure.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/hot-off-the-wire-the-bud-light-speaker-box/

Pic here, for when they no doubt remove the site once the campaign is done:

This "blog" has no other content on it besides filler... but VERY easy to miss if someone just pops in to look. Another example:

http://gizmosgadgetsnews.info/sports/bud-light-speaker-box-tailgate-approved

Pic here:

Gizmo and Gadget? Come on guys... but admittedly, pretty slick. I love the generic posts on the front page about the Honda Accord, Blackberry Storm and The Sims - all basically Wikipedia copy and pastes.

There are countless other fake posts about this thing - entire blogs set up just to promote this product, but written as if it was coming from independent bloggers. My favorite:

http://gourmetretailer.firstlightera.com/EN/Microsites/1/AnheuserBusch/BudLightSpeakerBox.htm

Pic here:

This is what APPEARS at first glance to be an online store selling the product, but as you can see, it says "Sponsored by Anheuser Busch" at the top. If you dig on the "Gourmet Direct" site you see it's all just AB product info. And no order link, which is most telling.

So at this point, I'm fairly convinced this reeks of shenanigans. I decide to download the "Product Sheet" offered on the Gourmet Direct page, and I get a Powerpoint deck with two slides in it, talking about the product. I decide to do some meta-digging... I wanna know who created this and I quickly find out by checking the document creator info. Turns out it was a gentleman named Greg Litwicki, from Shaw Company. A quick trip through Google lead me to this page:

http://www.shaw-company.com

Not surprising to find out that Shaw is Anheuser-Busch's advertising/marketing company (one of them at least). Please keep in mind that all this proves is Shaw created the Powerpoint deck for AB - but it certainly seems to suggest that this is a larger marketing initiative cooked up by Shaw.

I must say, this is a very well-executed campaign, as it is certainly not obvious. My hat is off to Shaw Company, if they are the ones to have come up with this... The real question is, will the Bud Light Speaker Box ever actually come out? Perhaps this is all pre-marketing to build hype around the product for football season. More likely: the product doesn't actually exist and this is simply to generate buzz for Bud Light. Interesting concept - promote a product that doesn't exist, get people into the store, and they pick up a case of Bud Light anyway. Nice.

Request for Shaw or AB: Please post the commercial on YouTube. I need it to fulfill my original goal: demonstrate the incredible influence of Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job on mainstream media. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Advertising, Beer, Marketing

Google Wave logo is a take on the Microsoft logo?

Posted by Mike Amin On 10/22/2009 1 comments

My little brother Moose (yes, that is his name) turned me on to Google Wave, Google's still-in-beta take on the email client. While I have a number of observations on the product itself (mainly around privacy issues), it struck me last night that there was something much more ominous about Wave: the logo.

The Google Wave logo not only uses the same colors as the Microsoft logo, but it is essentially an upside-down "M"! Is this Google taking one step closer to really becoming the next Microsoft? Check it out above.

Computers

Music video... NES style! Pato Pooh - Follow Me

Posted by Mike Amin On 10/19/2009 0 comments

Via Kotaku

Another 8-bit marvel here - Swedish rapper Pato Pooh (badass hip-hop name) has given himself and his crew the old-school treatment in his video for "Follow Me". This guy has basically taken old NES games and re-appropriated them for the hip-hop world (i.e. putting a backwards baseball cap on the in-game characters). Drawing heavily from Mega Man, the video also makes call-outs to tons of other classic NES titles. The ones I spotted:

- Castlevania
- Contra
- Starfox
- Super Mario World (love Boo's bling)
- Duck Hunt
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Pac-Man
- Metal Gear (All your base are belong to us)
- Street Fighter
- Double Dragon
- ET
- Donkey Kong
- Mike Tyson's Punch Out
- Super Mario Bros.
- Superman
- Legend of Zelda
- Ice Climber
- Tetris
- Kirby's Adventure
- And of course, Pong

At 2:01 of the video a background appears but I can't figure out what game this is (I definitely recognize it though). Anyone have any guesses? Did I miss anything? Correct me in the comment section below.

I also caught a reference to "Chocolate Rain" at 2:59 when the video flashes to an 8-bit studio and the note "I move away from the mic to breathe in".

Pato Pooh - Follow Me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plhgyp0KNQQ

Mike Amin: Director and Collector of Digital Art

A random assortment of junk that I find interesting, controversial, or relevant...