I decided to do the Musicless Music Video assignment.

I’ve seen some weird music videos in my day, so I knew I needed to track down the best of the best, the one that would truly come across as strange or awkward when the music was stripped away. And I thought of the perfect one: Panic! At the Disco’s “Girls/ Girls/ Boys.”

Here’s the original:

It’s basically the lead singer, Brendon Urie, sensually and expressively dancing around naked. It goes great with the tone and topic of the song, but take away the song and it gets really weird.

Here is the video without music:

It’s really strange.

So I thought I’d see what would happen if I incorporated some sound effects available in iMovie. (Spoiler Alert: It just got weirder.)

I decided to add some club-like music as well as some child sounds and police sirens to create this creepy pedophile narrative. (I watch a lot of Criminal Minds, okay?)

Wanting to redeem myself for creating such a sinister subtext to the music video, I decided to turn Brendon’s little dance into something that people are laughing at him for. Cue copious amounts of sitcom laughter clips. I love how some of Brendon’s facial expressions work well with being laughed at and seem to suggest he’s trying to stay composed despite being laughed at while he’s obviously baring his soul in a very vulnerable manner.

If nothing else from this assignment, I see how a good music video doesn’t make sense without its music and how changing the sound can affect how you comprehend the narrative of the video. Just think of all the movies where sounds are used to clue you in on what’s about to happen or toy with your emotions. It’s basically turning manipulation into an art form.