Friday Vid Picks: Earth Day!

This coming Sunday, April 22 is the 37th Earth Day. And after thirty-seven years have environmentalists come up with some compelling online video to inform AND entertain? While drum circles and half-baked “green” ideas can be found all over YouTube where is the upscale video side of the recently vogue green lifestyle?

iTunes recently highlighted some, featuring eight separate channels in this week’s Podcast Spotlight, including NewTeeVee fave . If Al Gore hasn’t yet convinced you of our global plight this week’s vid picks are serving up all the major food groups of online video. From vloggers to mashups to animations to online campaigning going green really should be going viral.

With a surefire clickable title, Mark Day weighs in with a healthy dose of Spielberg as he laments the disappearance of the recently-listed-as-endangered polar bear. Jumping from ANWR to Vanity Fair’s Green Issue to Republican pressure on scientists to suppress reports on global warming Day mixes logical outrage with his own cynicism to ring in Earth Day in an age of personal sustainability and political irresponsibility.

Eric Prydz Vs. (Pink) Floyd mashup is complete with a video of Truffautesque eco-warriors biking, climbing, and leaping across a cityscape wreaking environmental sustainability everywhere they go. The video, complete with viral video flavors of freestyle walking, BMX biking, and documented sabotage, has several remixes following it around. The link to download the song from Ministry of Sound Download yields an unsuccessful query, showing that this mashup has earned the distinct honor of DMCA take down.

Animation firms always have the most attractive websites and Three Legged Legs is no exception. In their Humans! the Santa Monica based group rips on the 1950s style PSA and delivers a scathing and beautifully animated diagnosis of earth’s sickening condition. Check out their other work too, though it’s not all environmental in focus, and they even have a feed.

The Victorian Government Initiative, from the land down under, recently launched an amazingly simple and beautifully moving ad campaign encouraging Victorians to be more conscious of energy consumption in their own homes and the associated green house gases the fully equipped modern home spews into the atmosphere. Created by one of Australia’s oldest advertising firms, George Patterson Y&R, the firm claims to be working to establish more sustainable brands but often caters to the unsustainbly consuming maintstream (hilariously). The Victorian Government initiative runs a variety of environmental awareness campaigns, from the straight forward Design for Sustainability to double entendre Don’t Be a Tosser.

So there is indeed some high quality green online video. The trick for most online video is to get people to watch it. Now we’ve got to get people to watch and then do something.