Video for my party?

October 12, 2005 8:50 AM

What strange (downloaded) videos can I show on my TV during my birthday party?

I'd love to have a collection of unusual video clips to play on my tv (via my Xbox Media Center: no Flash animations). At our last party I played some DVDs: old Popeye cartoons, Jim Ether's Red Alert, and Orgy of the Dead. The big problem, of course, is that you tend to play an entire DVD before switching to a new one. I want people wondering what the hell is going to play next.

Strange is good, so is sexy. These will be played with the sound off.

posted by skryche to media & arts (13 comments total)

The internet archive has lots of downloadable videos that will be of interest to you. In particular, I suggest the Prelinger Archives, which features tons of weird stock footage, training videos, and civil defense drills from the mid 20th century, all under creative commons licenses. You can have Duck and Cover running on a continuous loop - especially if we're at threat level mauve or higher...
posted by googly at 8:57 AM on October 12, 2005

You could poke around the video section of eBaum's World, mostly funny but some pretty strange/goofy stuff. This used to be hosted there, and was what I was thinking might be fun, had to go find it on another site though.

That "Duck and Cover" video is more than a little surreal. Clearly a different era from the one I've grown up in
posted by nelleish at 9:32 AM on October 12, 2005

This should make any party go swimmingly.
posted by fire&wings at 9:39 AM on October 12, 2005

Well, I was thinking more those in the "cool" section like this or this. But you do have to wade through the immature junk, should have put an advisory.
posted by nelleish at 9:44 AM on October 12, 2005

Chris Cunningham's Rubber Johnny.
posted by horseblind at 10:02 AM on October 12, 2005

I'd go with Lost & Found Video Night or TV Carnage. Both available on DVD. Clip after clip of wierdness. Could be even funnier if you served a cream pie.with a graham cracker crust.
posted by helvetica at 10:59 AM on October 12, 2005

I've been on a robot kick lately, and these are pretty cool examples: [1] [2] [3] [all links .mov].
posted by monju_bosatsu at 11:05 AM on October 12, 2005

Awesome Town (the show isn't too good, but this is the intro, and it's great)
posted by holloway at 1:35 PM on October 12, 2005

i suggest the Twigger series or anything else from Channel101.com
posted by hummercash at 1:56 PM on October 12, 2005

I just found this, it's pretty strange and funny even with the sound turned off.
posted by rabbitsnake at 4:56 PM on October 12, 2005

This is exactly what you need:

"C'etait un Rendezvous is the creation of the French filmmaker Claude Lelouch in 1976. Using a Ferrari 275 GTB early one August morning, Lelouch attached a camera to the bumper of the car and sped through the streets of Paris.

He gave the driver a set route from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, which is straight through the heart of Paris. The driver is still unknown to this day, because Lelouch was never able to obtain a permit to close the streets.

The driver, who Lelouch told officials was an F1 racer, went over the speed limit and blew off many red lights. When this film was first shown, Lelouch was arrested, and because of this, the footage has spent many years underground before it began to resurface on DVD a few years ago.

Lelouch used a new technology of the time, a gyro stabilized camera mount, in order to mount the camera on the car. The problem with this is that the technology of the time only allowed for a ten minute film with this mount. Lelouch told his driver to rush because of this time limit, and the video itself is only about nine minutes. In our velocity graph, we used all footage of the car when it was in motion."
posted by soiled cowboy at 7:11 PM on October 12, 2005

Text above from here.

And here is the torrent link, corrected.
posted by soiled cowboy at 7:12 PM on October 12, 2005

(that sounds entirely too cool, mr. soiled cowboy.)

Lots of great music videos embedded at sputnik7. Lots of Gondry, Cunningham, indie stuff, etc. I haven't looked into pulling them out of the site, but I can't imagine it would be too hard.
posted by rfordh at 11:24 PM on October 12, 2005