Video Full of Film Clips

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A common trope for songs that are part of a movie's soundtrack and (usually) written for that movie. The video consists of many clips from the film. This serves as an additional way of promoting the movie—often becoming its unofficial theme song (unless it's already the official theme song)--as well as providing another hit for the artist, and the song often finds itself as a bonus track on their next album or an Updated Rerelease of the current.

In more annoying examples, ever since The Nineties, the song will have no direct relation to the movie at all other than the video, especially if the video is fully coherent without the film clips, since it might have been re-edited to include them.[1] The aversion is when the song is featured on a movie soundtrack, and might be directly related to the movie, but won't feature any clips from the movie at all, though thematic elements or even actors from the film may appear.

In an inversion of this trope, some Fanvids produce a similar effect by including band footage from the song's official video.

Examples of Video Full of Film Clips include:
  • The first video for "Breaking Up The Girl" contained only bits and pieces of the completed video, as well as behind the scenes footage of the band, and clips from the Daria movie Is It College Yet?. The second did not.
  • Mika's "Kickass" was written specificly for the movie by the same name. It makes sense that the majority of the video is clips of the movie. With the rest being Mika running around singing, and laying on his back singing.
  • Most music videos for the James Bond movie themes.
  • Cleverly played with in the Beck video "Deadweight" for the film A Life Less Ordinary, in which Beck walks through a series of surreal situations that reflect scenes from the film. For example, he dials a number on a phone on a beach; the video then cuts to Cameron Diaz's character picking up a phone in the movie.
  • Similarly, the U2 video "Elevation" digitally adds behatted guitarist The Edge to a series of clips from the Tomb Raider movie, "hilariously" turning him into Lara Croft's sidekick.
    • On the other hand, their video for Batman Forever's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" turned Bono into an animated Batman comic book villain (inspired by his personas in the Zoo TV tour, The Fly and Mr. Macphisto) and intercut these sequences (including a rooftop performance by the comic-book version of the band) the with carefully-edited scenes from the movie. It's arguably much better than the movie that spawned it.
    • Seal's Kiss From a Rose, also from Batman Forever.
    • As well as "The Riddler" by Method Man. While the video itself is typical gangsta rap fare with a few arbitrary clips of the Riddler, the song was actually written for the movie.
  • The video for Kiss' version of "God Gave Rock And Roll To You" consists of Kiss archive clips and the rest of it is just a Performance Video.
  • Badly Drawn Boy provided two songs (and an entire score) for the movie About a Boy; the video clips for both built a very funny back story for the duck Marcus accidentally kills in one scene. In the clip for "Something to Talk About", we see how the duck has been tormenting the singer relentlessly since childhood, and he is finally freed from its tyranny when it dies; in the clip for "Silent Sigh" a scientist from the future unearths the frozen duck, and reading its memories finds that it was in love, but its partner was run over by a car—which happened to have the young singer in the back seat.
  • Beyoncé's song "Check On It", which was written for, but ultimately not included on the soundtrack for the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther.
  • Anastasia and Ben Moody's song "Everything Burns" has no link in lyrics, concept, theme, or mood to the film Fantastic Four, but that's all the video's about.
    • This is one of the sloppier examples, since a version of the video exists without any references—direct or thematic—to the Fantastic Four at all, leaving it a perfectly average (if mopey) music video, and making it clear that the song has nothing to do with the movie.
  • Cleverly avoided in the video for "Signal Fire" by Snow Patrol. The video shows a kids' school pageant where they re-enact Spider-Man 1 + 2, and it ups the sweet cleverness by making the main character of the video the kid who played the spider for thirty seconds at the start of the play. And he gets the girl in the end. Aww...
    • This also has some fairly kickass makeshift effects. The kind that gives that feeling of nostalgic jealousy that your school plays weren't more like that.
  • Bryan Adams's video for "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" played over the end credits of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was him walking around singing interspersed with clips from the movie.
  • Metallica's first video, "One", was clips of them playing interspersed with scenes from Johnny Got His Gun. Originally, it was just going to be a Performance Video, until the band bought the film rights to use it in the video (as it is a Filk Song and they would complement it well).
  • "No More Lonely Nights" by Paul McCartney, from his film Give My Regards to Broad Street.
  • Lampshade Hanging in the clip for R.E.M.'s "The Great Beyond" - the clips from Man on the Moon are presented as commercial breaks during a live taping of their performance for TV. At one point, the band members waiting out their break throw darts at a screen the clips are being projected upon. Moreover, the band actually discovers the Fourth Wall and escapes by smashing it, emerging from a TV set somewhere else; this is a subtle reference to Andy Kaufman's experimentation with various television tropes.
  • Queen's "Flash", the theme song of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.
    • Queen's video for "Radio Ga-Ga" contains numerous clips of Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis.
    • The video for Queen's song "Princes of the Universe" interspersed clips of the film Highlander with scenes of the band (on the film set), culminating in a sword fight between Freddie Mercury and a guest-starring Christopher Lambert.
    • A particularly egregious Queen example is "One Year of Love", also from Highlander, which originally had no video. The song later appeared on Queen's second compilation album (Classic Queen or Greatest Hits II, depending on your locale), and a video was needed to make the album match its corresponding VHS video compilation. One was cobbled together from Highlander clips and clips from other Queen videos.
    • And the video for Queen's song "The Show Must Go On" was entirely composed of clips from previous Queen videos. This was because Freddie Mercury's health was rapidly declining by this point, and he could not appear in a new video.
    • One more Queen example: Their video for the song "Bohemian Rhapsody", one of the earliest music videos, was re-cut to include clips from the movie Wayne's World, after said movie featured it prominently on its soundtrack and became a hit.
  • One of the earlier examples is Berlin's "Take My Breath Away", from Top Gun.
  • Most of the various music videos cooked up for the songs from Bubblegum Crisis fall under this trope. Most of the footage usually comes from the episode the song appeared in, but clips from other episodes also shows up now and then.
  • Some music videos for The Backyardigans songs invoque this trope as well. Here is one of them.
  • Smash Mouth's "All Star" video originally contained clips from Mystery Men, but when the song became much more popular than the movie, the clips were taken out.
  • The Psychedelic Furs' "Pretty In Pink": While the original video consisted of Richard Butler lip syncing inside an Alice In Wonderland-inspired house, once it became associated with the film of the same name, a second video was made featuring movie clips alternating with shots of the band miming with painted-over stills green-screened behind them, which was the director's way of putting a more artistic spin on things.
  • The video for Paramore's "Decode" is filled with clips from Twilight, and looks like it was shot in the same forest.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic had this with bits of Johnny Dangerously cut into 'This Is the Life'; the video itself is not a Performance Video itself.
    • Via a channel-surfing motif, "UHF" combines clips from the movie with Al visually spoofing video stars he hadn't already tackled onscreen by the end of The Eighties (Talking Heads, Prince, Billy Idol, The Beatles, Peter Gabriel, etc.).
  • Dokken's "Dream Warriors", from the soundtrack of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The clips are sort-of integrated into the video, with the band performing and running around in a warehouse not unlike the one featured in the dream scene near the beginning of the film. Also, at the end it appears to be All Just a Dream... of Freddy's!

Freddy Krueger: "What a nightmare! Who were those guys?"

  • The music videos for the covers on Disneymania are generally this
  • Linkin Park's "New Divide" from the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack.
  • M.C. Hammer's "Addams Family Rap" from The Addams Family included random clips from the film as well as new footage of the cast interacting with Hammer.
  • As it was released as a single to promote Dangerously Close, The Smithereens' "Blood and Roses" originally mixed clips of the movie with footage of the band playing in an empty school, as one of the film's characters lurked in the background. While not technically a Breakaway Pop Hit, since the song was already released on their debut album, the song became more popular than the movie, so it later was re-edited into a straight performance video. They couldn't cut the character out of background shots though, leading people who'd never even heard of the movie to wonder why this mysterious man in sunglasses was in the video just standing around doing nothing.
  • Chad Kroeger and Josey Scott's "Hero" from the Spider-Man soundtrack.
  • Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, with "Duel of the Fates", which also includes behind the scenes stuff and a "tone poem" featured on a TV spot. Attack of the Clones had "Across the Stars", which is more straightforward (cuts between John Williams and his orchestra and the movie).
  • Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" video integrated clips from the titular film with shots of the band members playing spies on the Eiffel Tower, the site of a running gunfight in the movie. Many of the clips are cut so it appears the band is actually helping James Bond escape his enemies. Considerably Better Than It Sounds, which admittedly isn't hard, but the band are really quite embarrassed by it these days.
  • Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" video contains clips from Trainspotting. Notable for the fact that the song is about 20 years older than the film.
  • The Harvey Danger cover of "Save It For Later" from the 200 Cigarettes soundtrack featured the band interacting with characters from the film via edited footage and body doubles. For instance at one point the singer drops his glasses in a mostly empty bowl with leftover frosting in it while performing - cut to a shot of Martha Plimpton's character licking frosting off one lens of a similar pair of glasses, then another shot of the singer picking the glasses back up, licking the other lens, and putting them back on. It's just well-integrated enough that if you aren't familiar with the film it might just seem like an exceptionally cameo-filled 80's-themed music video at first.
  • The music video for Adam Lambert's generic love ballad "Time For Miracles" consists of the singer walking through various CGI disasters from 2012. It's exactly as hilarious as it sounds.
  • The Proclaimers' second video for "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)," which included clips from Benny & Joon.
  • Billy Idol's "Speed" is a pretty standard example - faux live performance footage coupled with footage from the film of the same name, primarily action shots of the bus swerving around. In this case it's something specifically written for the movie though, and the lyrics do at least prominently use driving dangerously fast as a metaphor.
    • Billy Idol's "Cradle of Love" features scenes from The Adventures of Ford Fairlane - but without featuring in them main star Andrew Dice Clay, who had been banned from MTV.
  • Tenacious D's "POD" from Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny takes it in a very meta direction: the song is specifically about how awesome the movie is, and the video has them singing it in the middle of a crowded theater showing the movie itself (and eventually getting thrown out by security after annoying one too many people).
  • The UK release of Night at the Museum used Mcfly's "Friday Night" in the end credits. As expected, the official music video included clips from the movie alongside footage of the band fooling around in London.
  • "I Stand Alone" by Godsmack does this intermixed with The Scorpion King.
  • Girls Aloud's video for their cover of Jump (For My Love) is intercut with film clips from Love Actually, creating the illusion that the band snuck into Downing Street and spotting Hugh Grant's character dancing.
  • David Bowie videos derived from movie/TV soundtracks run the spectrum from playing this trope straight up ("This Is Not America", which he did with Pat Metheny Group, consists solely of clips from The Falcon and the Snowman) to completely averting it; see Movie Tie-In Music Video at Other Common Music Video Concepts for more on that. One example of this trope, the video for the Title Theme Tune from Absolute Beginners (1986), actually doubled as a theatrical trailer.
  • Michael Jackson did a video for each of the first two Free Willy movies. "Will You Be There" wasn't written for it but exported from his album Dangerous, so its video just intercuts a stage performance with movie clips. "Childhood (Theme from Free Willy 2)" was written for its film and averts this trope in its video, with the kids from the movie showing up to join a procession of happy children in flying boats while Jackson mournfully croons in a forest below.
  • The videos for most of the songs on the soundtracks to the 90's Batman movies, though only "The Riddler" by Method Man and "Gotham City" (and its remix) by R. Kelly were actually written for the movies in question. "Face to Face" by Siouxsie and the Banshees and "Foolish Games" by Jewel avert this, however.
  • This fan-made video of The KLF - America No More (What Time Is War) uses footage from The Day After.
  • A Perfect Circle's "Passive" is a mix of clips from Constantine and band-playing clips- except the latter are stylized with a false-color camera to fit in with the visual style used in that scene from the movie. The song was used in the movie.
  • Skinny Puppy's "Worlock" consists of deleted gory footage from 50 different horror films; due to the content and copyright issues, it was banned from broadcast and circulation.
  • Limahl's "Never Ending Story" uses clips from the titular movie.
  • Lisa Lougheed's "Run with Us", the credits theme for The Raccoons, uses clips from the show's pre-series Lost Star special.
  • The Foo Fighters have two, but both have storylines as well. "Breakout" is inspired by Me, Myself and Irene, and is probably better than that movie (Dave Grohl and Traylor Howard - who starred in that movie - go to to a drive-in to see Me, Myself and Irene, and Dave eventually suffers a Split Personality Takeover like Jim Carrey does in the movie). "The One" was more inspired by Fame than Orange County, but still opens with Dave reenacting a scene of said movie.
  • Systems in Blue's "Dr. No" coincidentally shares its title with a James Bond film, and a fan made a video for the song with clips from the film.
  • The video for Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" does this with clips from Armageddon.
  • The video for Warrant's cover of "We Will Rock You" is full of clips from the 1992 boxing movie Gladiator.
  • Pat Benatar's "Invincible" video does this for The Legend of Billie Jean.
  • The Red Hot Chili Peppers cover of "Love Roller Coaster" alternates between clips of Beavis and Butthead Do America and an animated version of the band themselves meeting Beavis and Butthead on a literal "love rollercoaster" (or at least, one shaped like a heart).
  • Pretty common with James Bond themes (even those which add a story in-between, such as Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill", though Garbage's one for "The World Is Not Enough" has a 007-less version).
  • The video for M2M's "Don't Say You Love Me" contained footage from Pokémon the First Movie playing on a screen at a drive-in where the video was shot.
  • "This Ain't No Picnic" by The Minutemen is a rare example where the song has absolutely nothing to do with the film: It pairs Deliberately Monochrome footage of the band in a barren field with Stock Footage from a public domain war film starring Ronald Reagan as a fighter pilot, manipulating the action to make it seem like Reagan is attempting to drop bombs on the band.
  1. ↑ Movie soundtracks are often a dumping ground for record companies trying to recoup some money off of previously-unreleased songs
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Video_Full_of_Film_Clips?oldid=1348269"