Literal Videos

Literal Videos are an Internet phenomenon that came to the fore in October 2008, when Dustin McLean uploaded his version of Take On Me to Youtube. Literal videos take the actual video but describe what is happening onscreen instead of using the real song lyrics. The best ones sound like the original soundtrack, but with different, often hilarious, words.

The types of videos that are most often picked to become a literal video are ones where the images are dream-like, and/or portray a story that only loosely connects with the lyrics, if at all, and often leaves loose ends in the viewer's mind, such as props that go nowhere, or a character that never reappears after appearing to be a major character.

Literal videos began with McLean's version of Take on Me. McClean, an animator and musician who has worked on Current TV has stated that it started as an inside joke between himself and two coworkers. His wife helped provide vocals. Within two months, it had over 2 million views, but had to be removed from Youtube due to copyright violations.Ganz, Caryn (2008-10-06). "Rocking Literally: The Story Behind “Take on Me,” “Head Over Heels” Video Parodies" . Rolling Stone. The videos are still hosted at his own website, Dustfilms.com.http://www.dustfilms.com/

Copyright issues plague the makers of literal videos. Many literal videos have been blocked with no reason given, only to later have the ban lifted. http://www.torreymeeks.com/Site/Home.html For this reason, although there has been some interested in making a TV show about literal videos, potential makers have been leery of the difficulty in obtaining original video to work with.