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The concert film of R.E.M.’s first world arena tour is a deliberately low-tech affair. A group of filmmakers took Super 8 and 16mm cameras and a mixture of color and black and white film to the final shows of the Green tour in 1990. Longtime band associate Jim McKay then edited the footage together to produce Tourfilm, a 17-song film that creates its own unique atmosphere rather than try to exactly duplicate the concert experience. Frequent use of slow- or sped-up-motion, double exposures, cuts between color and black and white, and the incorporation of the somewhat abstract filmed images displayed on the huge screen behind the band give the film a dream-like tone which actually enhanced my enjoyment of the music. (more…)

Pop Screen, a collection of videos from Document and Green, is the earliest R.E.M. video collection available on DVD. (Succumbs, which collects the videos from the band’s first four albums, is still available as a VHS-only release.) It’s a relatively short disc, and the videos hail from the period where R.E.M. was still turning out videos that often lacked a close connection to the songs - there’s very little performance footage, no lip-syncing at all, and several clips where the band never appears at all. (more…)

This Film Is On is an unusual compilation for R.E.M. in that it only features videos from one album, the band’s breakthrough Out of Time. That gives it a cohesion not found on other releases, and with 10 clips it’s not a paltry set by any means.

This Film Is On is divided into three sections; each section is introduced by a snippet of silent black and white footage filmed by longtime band associate Jim McKay, while each video opens with a black screen that highlights a lyric in plain white text. The first section is made up of the four videos the band initially filmed at the time of the album’s release that generally feature high production values and all four band members. (more…)

Showing no fear of stylistic clashes whatsoever, R.E.M. compiled their videos for Automatic for the People and Monster onto one collection. Parallel features six videos from the former album and five from the latter, with interstitial footage drawn from the films that were projected as a backdrop during the Monster tour. (A sixth Monster video, “Tongue”, was not completed at the time of Parallel’s release and was included on the In View best-of collection as a bonus clip.) It’s a very interesting disc for no other reason than the vivid contrast it establishes between two periods of the band’s career. (more…)