Synchronicity

Freshmen year of College, Paul took "Music in Film", an awesome class about the importance of a good soundtrack with a teacher whose name sounded like a cowboy (Roger Rideout. Seriously!).

For this class, Paul had some of the sweetest homework of all time, re-score a movie with the soundtrack of your choice. I really enjoyed helping him with these projects, watching movies and picking songs. My favorite was when we took the climax of a terrible monster b-movie and matched it up with "Hungry Like the Wolf."

Last night, Paul and I partook of the most infamous pairing of song and screen - "Dark Side of the Rainbow."


The effect of combining The Wizard of Oz (1939) with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (1973) is almost like a pop-culture inside joke now, so it's kind of easy to dismiss as cheesy stoner gimmick. I have to say though, that watching it is fairly amazing and totally cool. There are so many moments where the music hits in such a perfect way, that it's hard to imagine that the synching wasn't done on purpose. My favorite of all I think is in the second video here, when the witch appears and the music says "Black...." , and "which is which?"

Here are two parts that I feel like are especially noteworthy, but I do encourage you to, at some point, watch the whole thing from the start. As a warning, these videos are missing part 12, in which the gang meets the wizard and journeys to the witches castle.






It's a really fun, different way to watch a childhood classic, though sometimes I had a hard time not superimposing the original song over the music in my head. It's also a great way to enjoy Pink Floyd, which I've been on kind of a kick with lately. Paul and I listened to The Wall (1982) during our long ride home from the Cape on Saturday.