Friday, February 08, 2008

Bon Jovi loves your town

Jon By Jovi out the Von Jovis wants you to help him out. There's going to be a huge tour of the US this year, and rather than merely yell out "{name of city or town} are ya ready to rawwwwwck" and "we love you, {name of city or town}", some semblance of place and time is to be achieved by flashing images of the town they're in onto a massive back projection at the show. And rather than film them themselves, they're looking for fans to do the work for them.

You have to upload the videos through YouTube, according to the website, and there's no indication anywhere that, if you win, you'll be asked to supply the original video, which seems to imply that Bon Jovi are going to be flashing videos designed for viewing on a tiny window on a web browser onto a big backdrop at a rock stadium. Can anyone see a problem with that?

You do get tickets if your shoot is one of the selected ones - which might sound like great deal, but the terms and conditions state that just by uploading the video you transfer ownership of your work to Bon Jovi, forever. Even if you don't win.

We love this part of the rules, too:

Bon Jovi Tours, Inc. and BonJoviLovesMyTown.com reserve the right at their sole discretion to reject and disqualify any nude video or those videos which are deemed in its sole discretion to be obscene, profane, offensive, lewd, pornographic or otherwise inappropriate.

They could simply choose not to project any porny videos on their stage, but instead, they're going to disqualify and reject them as well. It's unclear if rejection means that Bon Jovi no longer owns the rights to sell the video, by the way.

There's some advice to aspiring filmmakers, too. Bon offers examples of "cool shots" (a sign from Fisherman's Wharf, some people stood on a street, a skyline shot and - and this might be the peak of cool - Kermit The Frog's star outside the Chinese Theatre: these boys really know how to get to the beating heart of a town). And don't forget, filmmakers:
The secret to good storytelling is to show, don't tell. As the selected videos will be shown without sound on the live concert stage, it's good to be visual.

Yes. If you don't have any sound, being visual might be a good idea.

If only Bon was coming to Milton Keynes.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The thought of any hair metal type shrieking "are you ready to rock, MILTON KEYNES??" made me snort-laugh.

This sounds like something Christopher Guest would come up with. Only, as a joke.

CarsmileSteve said...

rachel, Ver Jovi have played (oh yes) the Milton Keynes Bowl several times over the years, as have loads of other top rockers. this doesn't stop your point being perfectly valid ;)

Chris Brown said...

This isn't first-hand, but a friend of my brother's does claim to have seen Marilyn Manson run to the edge of the stage and chant "MILTON KEYNES... MILTON KEYNES... MILTON KEYNES!"

I don't entirely know why that's funny, but it is.

Olive said...

Bill Bailey mentions this during one of his shows. must've been at the same gig...

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