Crows vs Cat vs Cat vs Leonard Bernstein

The original fight footage can be found here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cbBlYfTbA44

The score of the original is from the Predator 2 Soundtrack by Alan Silvestri ( http://youtu.be/UZHflX1X6Q0 ). The score to this video is "Prologue" from the "West Side Story" soundtrack ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8R9GiLImSw#t=5m25s )

Note (11/28/2010): The original video - actually, the plagiarized video by SilverStar830 - appeared on a post at Gawker.com ( http://gawker.com/5699720/the-most-intense-cat-fight-you-will-ever-see ). That post has, as of this writing, received well over 90,000 unique visitors.

Apparently, in order to post videos to YouTube, one must have a well-defined and thoroughly considered intention - "have a point", as commenter JonnyPxN urges below. The only point I had in mind for posting the original "Cat vs Crows" video with an altered soundtrack was so that I could embed the altered video in the comments to the aforesaid Gawker post (Gawker only allows video from YouTube to be embedded in the comments). I intended the embedded video, with its West Side Story score, to be a witty reply to the original video posted at Gawker. If the published demographics of Gawker's readership are realistic, then it's safe to assume that its readers are more inclined to be familiar with the works of Leonard Bernstein and, because it is one of the most famous works he was associated with, a "West Side Story" (a musical about, among other things, warring street toughs, but of the human variety) . I assumed, therefore, that those who came across my comment and the embedded video would be capable of divining the reason behind my alteration of the video's soundtrack and would, thereby, "get" my apparently futile attempt at humor-via-video-editing.

That reason, if it's not already clear, was to imply an analogy between the crows and cats shown above and the Jets and Sharks of the "West Side Story", the two opposing street gangs whose danced and sung battles served as a backdrop to the musical's main plot. (The two gangs were themselves allegories to the rival clans - the Capulets and Montagues - of Romeo and Juliet). One of the golden rules of comedy is that "if you had to explain it then it wasn't funny". By that measure, this long explanation is an admission that the video above was not funny - at least to most people.

Mine is a throw-away video and was not meant to garner pageviews (the copyrighted soundtrack precluded revenue-sharing, anyway); nor was it meant to diminish or compete with the clever sound-editing work of YouTuber ignoramusky (http://www.youtube.com/user/ignoramusky) who scored the original (see here for how he/she did it: http://youtu.be/cIkc3eGPeRk ).

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• crows
• cat
• street
• gang
• fight
• cats
• fights
• crow
• leonard bernstein
• bernstein
• west side story
• prologue
• gawker
• gawker.com

[daytimesky]

The thing is, your music, while really good, doesn't fit the action perfectly. It continues to be fast moving during the second standoff, whereas the other video's music changes to tense during the second standoff, and exciting during each fight.

[atlasfugged]

@daytimesky See the description. I didn't set out to edit the score to tightly match the action of the video (I just edited it to match the initial attack) as the original author did. That would have required sampling different parts of "Prologue" then splicing them seamlessly into the score in accordance to the action. While this would have produced a better result, it would also have required more effort than I was willing to expend. I just wanted to post it in the comments of Gawker.com. ;)

[atlasfugged]

@daytimesky Thanks for the feedback, though!

[ignoramusky]

youtube.com/watch?v=cIkc3eGPeR­k - video about making? sound of "Cats Horror"

[atlasfugged]

@ignoramusky Thank you! Could you attach that video?

[JonnyPxN]

What is the point of nicking people's original videos, ruining the video quality, and adding some totally ilogical sound choice that ruins the mood?

[atlasfugged]

@JonnyPxN There is no point. What is the point of most of the videos on YouTube? What's the point of posting of "Nazi Zombies" sounds lifted from CoD: Black Ops? That said, there was apparently enough of a point to elicit a pointless comment from you.

As to the logic of the sound choice, what would represent a logical choice? See "West Side Story". You'd realize that there is at least as much logic in using its score as there is in using the score of Predator 2.

Lighten up. Life is too short.

[Crud143]

LOL at the people who don't get it.

[charles118xx]

i like the predator soundtrack better.

[crystalscreationsla]

i wasnt expecting the cats to start fighting. I thot they were going to gang up on the pigeons! Whats even more hilarious is the fact that the pigeons seem to encourage the fight amongst the cats! Notice how one bites the cats tail and encites the next round of attack. LMAO. And i think the music you picked was an awesome pair to the visual.

[ignoramusky]

@atlasfugged yep!:)

[carribas]

What's with everyone critiquing this video so meticulously? It was FUNNY!! You people are all retarded. I thought the music was suffice...even if it didn't add up exactly. Wasn't even noticeable if it was off tempo from the action. I feel bad for that cat and as an avid animal lover, I would've shooed off those pigeons and the suspect cat. LOL But all in all, I enjoyed this video! Thanks for posting....the music made it funnier!! :-D

[DrBeverlyCrusherDF]

Was this CROWincidence or just a CATastrophy?

[evilsnakes1]

thx for adding the link to the original up, that's the way it should be played.

[Crumphorn]

Ignore the haters. I thought this was a great idea nicely done.

[prestonparish]

serious credit for.. well, giving credit where it's due!

I dig your version as well - nice work!