Remember when videos were “arty,” and were basically people standing around singing? Yes, I’m talking about the ‘80s, instead of now when videos are like tiny action movies with five costume changes and special effects. The most special the effects got back in the day was Michael Jackson’s Thriller contacts. Well, friends, someone has come along to breathe new life into those old videos and you may have seen them: Literal Videos. But do you know the clever artist behind the genius dubs?

Dustin McLean, animator, film maker, and musician is the creative force of nature behind the original Literal Video. In case you have not had the lulzy pleasure of taking one in, you should know that he has dubbed the videos to describe exactly what is happening in them, and often his dubs sync up closely with the original words. Here is McLean’s take on Billy Idol’s "White Wedding":

Another super popular one, and a favorite around the intergoogles (but not by Dustin McLean), is Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart". A+ improvement on the original schmaltzfest, well done.

This awesome contribution to pop culture is not the first offering from McLean, nor is it the last. He also has great commercial parodies. Taking advantage of the Snuggie Phenomenon, Dust Films presents a new innovation: Blanket! 

McLean also hit up the Cash 4 Gold (ahem, alleged) scam with “Send Us Your Gold.” I got curious about the Cash 4 Gold craze since I didn’t really follow it the first time and found a posting about how it works on a message board, which I was amused to see had a Cash 4 Gold ad on the same page. That’s the interwebs, for you.

McLean seems to have this frantic need to create and entertain, I love it. I hope his other stuff doesn’t get lost in the literal videos. I hope you’ll check out the man behind the Literal Videos—he’s one of those bright spots on the internet and I hope he hits it big.

Related Items of Interest

WTF blanket (NSFW; swears)

Blog post about gold scam

The ultimate word on scams from Cockeyed 

Toxic: Judgemental Version (warning: delightful use of the word "fap")

Of course Wikipedia weighs in on Literal Video

Not related to any of this but totally awesome (via KDAWG): Autotune the news

To paraphrase HHGttG: SJ's just this guy who writes this blog, you know?