One of my absolute favorite artists, Don Hertzfeldt, recently did an "Ask Me Anything" on reddit. I took a screen capture of his answer to this question because I felt everyone would benefit from reading it.
for 1 week, 60,000+ people will build the 4th largest city in Nevada... Black Rock City... in a desolate waterless uninhabitable desert... even though it's temporary, it's said to be the most educated city in the world... there's nothing to buy... no one sells anything... no corporations allowed... everyone brings gifts... no phone/internet... walking & bicycling are the only modes of transportation... an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance... When it's over, we'll leave no trace we were ever there... goodbye world, I'm off to Burning Man!
Way back in 2004... in the dark days before youTube, DSLRs, & Nolan's Batman Begins... Fanboys like myself loved this $18,000 mock trailer by John Fiorella. Like most fan-films, he never made a cent from it, since he didn't have permission from Warner Bros. The gargantuan passion/dedication he put into this, is admirable.
Personally I'm against adding music to my 1 Second Everyday project. Being able to listen to any particular moment is crucial to remembering it. The sound of my dad laughing... Tina Fey's Bossypants audio book while I'm driving through Tennessee... even the sound of slapping my cousin hello brings me back, haha :)
Not to mention that music directs you towards a certain mood. And some of these seconds can switch from joy to sorrow, then back to joy in literally a heart beat.
To quote my friend Paris Mavroidis who eloquently defended my decision to a vimeo commenter:
"I'm glad he didn't cheapen it by adding music. If his intent was to create a sexy ad about how great his life is then ok, maybe a life-affirming song in the background would have worked better. But this feels more like he's documenting his life, and the use of the real audio clips makes it more honest; it speaks to the fact that life includes funny moments, sad ones, boring ones and everything in between. Just throwing a song with a single mood over the whole thing wouldn't do his year justice, it would just whitewash everything and a lot of the nuance would be lost. I don't think he's trying to promote his life or make the video as entertaining as possible for an audience and I appreciate that. It's a record of his life that is meant for him to reassess how he lives it and encourage the viewer do the same, and i think it works really well."
All that being said. A Brazilian, Jaryson Lima, sent me this today. He took the liberty of adding music to my video. I really enjoyed watching it like this. It's not something I'll be doing to my yearly videos for the reasons stated above, but I'm all for remixing anything! I'm honored he took the time to do this.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 1:30PM 
click on image for the full reddit thread
