The Scientific Truth About DARK SIDE OF THE RAINBOW

I watched it in sort of a maybe a peculiar unorthodox way that I'm excited to sort of hop into maybe a little bit deeper into this episode of death blart tell us I'm sick of everyone to precursor during all of these comments now give us the Jews just go ahead and tell you that I did in fact watch it synced up with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on Thanksgiving Day 2017 the host of the podcast till death do us Blart released their third annual episode they watch and review the film paul blart mall cop - every year but this year one of the hosts Griffin McElroy put a twist on his viewing he synched up the film to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon [Music] this is a reference to a long famous stoner activity slash conspiracy theory that people call dark side of the rainbow it's the action of sinking Dark Side of the Moon up to the Wizard of Oz I can't find any articles on win or who or why this all started but according to Wikipedia it only appeared as recently as 1995 around then a man named Charles Savage wrote an article about it in the Fort Wayne Indiana Journal Gazette but even he references other parties trying to perfect this weird cocktail but when paired these two pieces of art result in a handful of interesting synchronicities lyrics match up to events on screen there are rhythmic similarities there's some shared somatic elements not to mention that the album cover features the transition from black and white to a full colors back that like like happens in the movie in the movie if you remember that happens most people who set this as a coincidence that's still really fun to watch if you've smoked enough but some insists that it was the band's intent even though the people in the band have said a whole bunch of times that it wasn't which is very classy of them because it would be so easy for them to just say like yeah we did that that was all us but regardless of artists intent or lack thereof dark side of the rainbow has been a popular urban legend for decades and it continues to be meaningful to budding young stoners to this day Griffin McElroy after watching paul blart mall cop 2 in a similar fashion cites a lot of really similar synchronicities arguably even more than you can point out in Wizard of Oz and that was what got me thinking is Wizard of Oz really synchronous to Dark Side of the Moon objectively scientifically would any other randomly selected movie be just as good if not a better pairing for the album did the phenomenon start because there was something really there or just because somebody thought to try it I wanted to answer this question scientifically so I conducted an experiment I watched a handful of movies from all different periods in genres all synced up to the album [Music] an effort to be as unbiased as possible in this very scientific experiment I concocted a point system if at any point the lyrics of a song match up to an action happening on screen that's three points if an action or cut syncs up rhythmically that's also three points if a song's lyrics matched the movie thematically that's two and if a song just serves as a good score to a scene like you like it just has the same vibe you know like it's just a vibe is worth one point only one point for a vibe these are my very objective and scientific parameters they are perfect and completely unquestionable for this experiment I'm going to watch a magical family adventure from the 30s a shitty cash-cow comedy from 2014 a modern mega blockbuster sci-fi action film a groundbreaking art horror movie from 1980 beloved animated neoclassic from 2001 and an aunt or family crime drama from 1972 I picked these movies because they represent a wide range of different tones and genres they reflect a broad spectrum of filmmaking and I did not pick them because I knew that if I picked those ones I could put Shrek and Santos in the thumbnail on YouTube that does nothing to do with it so in this system longer movies are probably going to have higher scores just because there's more time and more opportunities for synchronicity the Godfather is almost two times as long as paul blart mall cop too so it has a clear advantage to avoid this problem I'm going to take the raw number of points a movie earns and divide it by its runtime in minutes giving us a more weighted number I'm gonna call this number a Floyd quotient so for example if a movie scored 100 points and was 100 minutes long it would have a Floyd quotient of 1 if the same movie scored 50 points it's Floyd quotient would be point 5 100 minutes divided by 50 points would 50 points yeah 50 points divided by a hundred minutes 0.5 it makes sense it's all there I know what I'm doing so now it's time to quit stalling and actually get to work on it I synched up the album to the most well-known point the third MGM lion roar for each of these movies I'm going to start the album right at the very beginning just whenever the beginning of the movie is when you watch it on iTunes Amazon whatever that might be that's where I'm gonna start but for movies like Wizard of Oz where there is a specific urban legend start point I'm gonna start there instead I have to say I do now understand why this has stood the test of time as an urban legend there are is like some really insane moments in this near the beginning miss Gulch shows up right as these alarms are all going off in the album like just like Danger Danger she's gonna kill your dog if you don't get out of there [Music] great gig in the sky starts right as the tornado touches down and then transitions into this soft reprieve right as Dorothy passes out [Music] and then right afterwards money starts like as soon as she steps into Oz like into color for the first time it's it's crazy it's insane the album is only playing just this ominous heartbeat during the song called if I only had a heart I'd be friends with the sparrows Dorothy passes out again right as the singer sings the words one step closer to death Dorothy passes out a lot in this movie as she wakes up in Kansas at the end right as the singer sings the lyrics home again [Music] it's insane the timing on that is so crazy wake up honey and these synchronicities are really fun but sometimes there are points where the music doesn't just match the movie but it adds extra meaning and extra layers to the story being told the big climactic battle at the end happens during the song called us-and-them which is a song about like the senseless yet inevitable nature of violence and conflict in the world but it also plays during the second half of Munchkinland as they're sending Dorothy off on this mission to destroy the witch it gives this movie this weird fanatic idea of retaliation it almost paints the munchkins as being just as vindictive and cruel as the witches army it almost implies equal fault in a senseless conflict money a song about greed and the inherent immorality of wealth plays during both the introduction to Munchkinland and the introduction to the Emerald City it calls the apparent wonderfulness of these places into question in a really interesting way these are the kinds of things that people cite when they're talking about how cool of an experienced dark side of the rainbow is but what they tend not to mention is all the dead air in between those mind-blowing moments so much of the movie passes by with me like sitting at my computer thinking as hard as I can trying to find anything that might maybe count as a sink worse than dead air though are the moments that seem to achieve the complete total opposite of what the movie is trying to do somewhere over the rainbow one of the most iconic songs in human history is this melancholy ballad about wishing your circumstances were different and looking forward to the day when you have the power to control your own life its underscored by on the Run which is a five-minute song that's just like the same grading synth arpeggio like over and over and over again it for the worst [Music] [Music] the same thing for the emotional heart of the movie the scene where the wizard is giving out gifts two protagonists once again it's on the run it totally Rob's the scene of any of its triumph or relief it just makes you feel makes you feel bad it's zero out of ten I don't like it it's a bad experience all said the movie earned 52 points which divided by its 102 minute runtime gives us a FOID quotient of 0.5 1 [Applause] [Music] this is going nice and fast in trying to emulate Griffin McIlroy's sink point for paul blart mall cop - I used one specific thing he said to match the timing of his viewing but breathe in the air the second targeting album has heard of this lungs very sad intro that is like a pretty good like background for paul blart sly falling apart and the lyrics to that song kick on i am not kidding you the frame that the mom gets hit by the car with that as the only point of reference that makes the start time a little weird it makes it right there i won't go into too much detail regarding all the cool moments in this viewing because I think Griffin himself does a pretty good job of chronicling them in the podcast but the major highlights include the Cirque de Soleil kicking up their giant stage show during great gig in the sky [Music] paul blart getting attacked by a bird set to brain damage [Music] it's [ __ ] the coolest there is I have one point of contention though early on there's a moment that Griffin McElroy claims happens like this [Music] but on my viewing it happens a little bit more like this like this I don't know what I want to do for that if I should gesture or not this is a good time to bring up that sinks aren't always going to be down to the moment replicable the album might have slightly different periods of silence between songs depending on where you're listening to them if the movies audio and the album's audio are playing a different bit rates it can make the audio start to creep out of sync over time any number of things could have happened that would result in that less than a second discrepancy and he also just left out one of the best parts paul blart mall cop 2 scored 54 points which divided by 94 minutes gives us an F Q of 0.5 9 which is actually slightly higher than the Wizard of Oz scored I found that Dark Side of the Moon is fun to watch with movies because there's an inherent drama within it the album has something like a dramatic arc and even though it's not telling a story per se it still mirrors and mimics the dramatic arts of something like film most films follow pretty Universal story guidelines a typical scene in a film or any story really is made up of some kind of introduction a buildup a climax and then a catharsis a typical movie will have a three-act structure with each act containing similar arcs and if you're doing it right the film overall should behave the same way with an introduction and a build-up to a climax and then sort of add a new want coming off the end the same can be said for Dark Side of the Moon each song is an intro or strong build-up a dramatic climax before mellowing out in the outro and like a movie the same can also be said of the album as a whole it stands to reason that depending on the length and structure of the movie Dark Side of the Moon might very well mimic the dramatic arc of the story not to mention that a typical movie is about an hour and a half to two hours long which gives you the time to listen to the album about three times typically so it can it can really really strictly mirror the one of the three acts of the story [Applause] are you getting these these nice mouth sounds good it would be a radical we get sponsored by skittles Shrek has one of my favorite moments in this entire experiment but all in all it's just not as exciting as most of the other subjects most of the movie goes by without much that's particularly exciting there are some fun moments but they're separated by these long swaths of swathes is that how you say that swathes is that correct give you some feedback spots okay but they're separated by long swaths of movie where the music is just this obtrusive white noise and keep it sitting at your computer for like eight hours listening to Pink Floyd and you start to wonder if anybody except for you cares about this whole weird experiment you're doing but I don't know I might be bringing my own baggage to that let me just give you some of the highlights though [Applause] [Music] it's interesting to me actually because the first song on the album breathe ends up conveying pretty much the exact opposite of what's being shown on screen it's this very existential song about feeling stuck and worrying that you're running out of time in your life put over footage of Shrek being perfectly content exactly where he is he's fighting to be left alone and like I said in that interlude the mellow opening of the album will often nearer the openings to movies in terms of energy but not necessarily in terms of tone during that same song at the beginning of other films we see for example Dorothy hating the environment she's being raised in and yearning to escape to somewhere else we see Jack Torrance struggling to make his writing career take off and worrying that it never will we see Thor's entire people destroyed and the reality of his real responsibility crashing down on him and we see paul blart wife get hit by a car or something I already can't remember what happens in paul blart mall cop 2 but shrek is just enjoying his bug dinner and his ear wax candles like a normal guy would just like a movie Dark Side of the Moon rises and falls there's tension and release it has all the things that make a narrative story satisfying but what differentiates stories from each other is the content within those structures Dark Side of the Moon touches on lots of universal themes and broad emotional ideas which just happen to line up with some particular stories more than others Shrek just starts in a different place than the other movies on the list and in a different place than Dark Side of the Moon does Shrek only scored 37 points divided by 92 minutes that gives it an F Q of 0.41 but that low score is nothing compared to the carton [Music] which only scored 70 points hits gruelling 175 minute runtime giving it the lowest fq of the whole experiment of 0.40 [Music] the Godfather is an absolute chore there's not really much to say about it it's a much more subdued movie than all the other ones on the list there's not a lot of strong physical actions for the album to sort of Mickey Mouse so a lot of the time the music just serves as like bland wallpaper The Godfather wrestles with a lot more complicated emotional beats than the other movies on this list - and often in a really subdued sort of slow-burn kind of way it's not a very outwardly emotional movie so pairing it with an album that is a pretty Rolly emotional piece of music it just it's not quite a balanced breakfast [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] infinity war scored a point six nine one and which really makes it now look so good for Wizard of Oz infinity war is the antithesis of the Godfather it's a broad movie with big actions and wide emotions the action is non-stop you get almost no time to rest in this movie which gives it a strong advantage in my system which I realized was more and more flawed the longer this experiment went on moments that were rhythmically in sync were worth the most points and there are just so many punches crashes explosions and disintegrations in this movie it would be almost impossible for a not to score high [Music] if you ride the tide balanced our [ __ ] way too [Music] right [Music] [Music] but I saved the best movie the last The Shining is a movie that has a reputation for being over analyzed people say that the Indian heads on the cans and the pantry are thematically relevant they say that this poster looks like a Minotaur and that's also important they say that if you watch the movie forwards and backwards at the same time then the scene where Jack talks about previous murders plays alongside the actual murder at the end of the film people say that I don't know why they do what they do I figured it was only natural that I would subject the shining to a similarly odd viewing experience myself [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey guys it's Jackson here with something I forgot to say the first time there's a well-known conspiracy theory that Stanley Kubrick helped to fake the moon landing supposedly the shining is in part an expression of his experience having to work on that insane of a project in secret and the 2:37 of room 237 represents the 237,000 miles from the earth to the moon and as luck would have it right when Danny is looking at the numbers 237 the singer of Pink Floyd is saying the word moon [Music] The Shining got 0.69 points making it the highest score in this weird competition before I look at the data and crown a winner though I want to take a second and talk about death of the author [Music] it's a framework of thinking here's a second I'm gonna get a drink there second I gotta get the water out of my lungs before we keep going death of the author is a framework of thinking about art that says that an artist's intention is completely irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the relationship between the work itself and the consumer obviously Stanley Kubrick didn't intend for his movie to be played front to back and back to front simultaneously but somebody did it anyway and to them it has meaning that version of The Shining is a piece of work that exists outside of the author's intent and depending on how you feel about death of the author that might be completely inconsequential similarly playing The Shining or really any other movie with Dark Side of the Moon creates what is essentially a new work removed from any real person's intent except for maybe you for just thinking to put them together really there isn't any author to kill to enjoy these movies synced up to Dark Side of the Moon is really the same thing as enjoying that weird overlapped version of The Shining it's accepting that the art has value as an experience between you and it removed from the person who created it [Applause] The Shining won this contest in raw numbers but now at the end of the journey I think the system that doled out the numbers is kind of flawed in a lot of ways I discovered pretty quickly in my first viewing is that the scoring system doesn't work perfectly in practice in paul blart money plays both times Blart visits the weapons expo which is a wild and incredible coincidence but is realistically only worth four points whereas a strong beat syncing up with a punch in infinity war is worth three and I don't really think that's fair not to mention that many of the instances of two pointers which are lyrics having somatic similarities to a movie are really open to interpretation and can be stretched to fit a lot of situations these scores could vary really drastically because of the subjective interpretations of the criteria I know I know it's astonishing during paul blart I noted that a lot of really minut circumstances can deeply affect the timing and therefore the experiences of these viewings meaning that there are many different versions of each of these movies none of them any more or less valid than the others I want to point out this video where someone has uploaded Dark Side of the rainbow to you [Music] in order to accommodate all of the many different sync points that people have experienced and documented over the years they have to mess around with the timing pretty drastically they regularly pause the album or pause the movie for just long enough to make everything work no 1 start time or viewing experience is really definitive all this is to say that the points can vary really really drastically based on minut timing differences but perhaps the most important flaw is this the points in my system only accounted for similarities between the two works but not interesting differences like I said about Wizard of Oz the album adds narrative ideas to the movie it enriches the story of the film in really interesting ways when I set out on this experiment I didn't assign a point value for when the music injects poignant subtext that didn't exist in the film originally taking these points in stride I think I have to re-evaluate my objective and intelligent judgment I do really think the Wizard of Oz is the most worthwhile experience as a film The Wizard of Oz is kind of vacant it has its morals at the end of the story but other than that it's not really about much and for the most part it's just sort of a really episodic adventure there's more emotional negative space for Dark Side of the Moon to fill the other movies I compared it to or already just kind of full they have perspectives and really specific emotional wavelengths they're trying to engage with and adding another piece with just as much assured miss just makes it feel kind of overcrowded moving forward I think the most exciting movies to pair with Pink Floyd are the ones that don't have a whole lot to say in the first place paul blart mall cop 2 was a close runner-up in terms of how much fun I had watching it just because it's it's vacuous it's easy to impose alternate emotion onto it because it's just it's a blank slate [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] right [Music] [Applause] [Music] but I couldn't have good I don't see how you weren't around when I was stuffed and it's all together William and I was standing over there rusting for the longest time I wish I could remember but I guess it doesn't matter anyway you know each other now don't we that's right we do [Music] so I guess that's it thank you for listening to me talk about film theory and Pink Floyd for I don't know 45 minutes probably but if you want to play along at home it's so easy to sync up your favorite movies to Dark Side of the Moon and you know pick out your favorite your favorite comedies your favorite adventure movies stuff that's not that's not super complicated the simpler the better and the more fun I think you'll have with it goodbye I hope you enjoyed it and I I hope that I make lots of money off this video and I get really famous that's what I hope I'm in I'm in it for the money thank you good night that's it okay yeah sure let's call it there thank you guys so much for watching I have been working on this video in one form or another for more than a years so finally finishing it and putting it out in front of everybody feels really really good all the movies I talked about in their own way are super fun to watch with Dark Side of the Moon so if you feel inclined to have some friends over put it on let me know what you thought about it this if you this is my call to action if you do leave a comment and tell me what you thought tell me if there were any super exciting synchronicities that I failed to mention in the video if you for some reason still want to hear more from me you can always check out my weekly podcast I record it with my sister we just sit down and we talk about a movie different movie every week and that's the whole premise we're hoping that the fact that we're siblings is enough of a hook to get people interested I've also gotten a handful of different talking head video essay style videos on this channel as well which you are also welcome to check out I do a series called a study in Marvel where I look at every Marvel movie ever and talk about it and that's all thank you so much I really appreciate you watching all the way to the end it means the world to me I hope you have a good night [Music]

Channel: No Nerds Allowed!

Views: 272,062

Keywords: Dark Side of the Rainbow, Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd, Conspiracy Theory, Video Essay, Documentary, The Wizard of Oz, Film Theory, Death of the Author, Review, Shrek, Thanos, Avengers Infinity War, Paul Blart, Till Death do us Blart, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, The Shining, Griffin McElroy, The Godfather, Paul Blart Mall Cop, McElroy, Urban Legend

Id: 6kzqrPPDfU0

Length: 34min 38sec (2078 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BeefErky]

I always thought that for a movie sync you had to mute the film's audio...

[u/The_Shallot_Knight]

This is a really nicely done video. More than ever we're in an era of fake news, conspiracy theories and stupidity -- but this is exactly the antidote. No Nerds Allowed, you have carefully crafted an entertaining and thoughtful piece that I've thoroughly enjoyed.

Now, I don't really think anyone sober or rational has ever really taken the synchronicity of Dark Side and Wizard of Oz that seriously. Though it is a fun coincidence and years ago I gave the first 30 min or so a try (then got bored). But what you've done here is ask the intelligent question of whether it can sync with other movies and have chosen a hilariously-wide range of genres. Your point system seems as sensible as any (though you later are pretty disparaging about the points). I love how quickly it becomes apparent that other films come surprisingly close, equal or exceed that of Wizard of Oz. My own guess is that older films are simply much slower and this allows more space for the music to fill and find meaning, which is sort of what you say (though I'm hesitant to call Wizard of Oz vacuous). 

And, lastly, your video is well-crafted. It's not surprising that it took you a year. The planning, talking to camera and editing are all superb and well worth the final product. Hope you get the views and recognition it deserves.