Online video has got everybody all frothed up and excited: consumers, producers, advertisers, suits. But a lot of people are getting paid big bucks to try and figure how to bring the participatory culture of the web to old media. Even though their products represent giant forces in the formation of our culture, big media companies are still remarkably old-fashioned in incorporating and using the web to their advantage. In the end they leave it up to their marketers and much of even this communication is one-way.

What these companies want and increasingly try to tap, are those key connected demographics at the root of this web 2.0 era. They and fans both want interactivity. Companies want it to build deeper ties to brand and build product loyalty while testing out new content models that draw traffic to their sites. Fans on the other hand want community and connection to the media and stars they love.

One of the best ideas that’s to arise from this ideology is the promotional contest. “Come fans, create promotional content for us! We want to let you participate in the making of this media stuff you like so much!” Fans love the recognition and companies love the free labor. Genius.

All sarcasm aside, it’s a neat idea and even neater when cool things come out of it, such as this week’s video, the winner of indie rock band The Decemberists “Reanimate the Decemberists Green Screen Challenge” a teamup of MTVU and The band’s Atlantic Records recording company.

You may remember hearing about this one awhile back. The band disseminated footage online of them playing their song O Valenica! In front of a green screen, and asked fans to create a music video by animating the background. The winner would air on MTVU. A certain Stephen Colbert took offense though, since it was remarkably similar in concept to a green screen contest he did a month earlier. He blasted The Decemberists on air, they in turn challenged him to a guitar battle, next thing you knew it was Guitarmageddon.

That whole brouhaha unfortunately got more attention than the contest and its worthy winner, a young music video creator by the name of Kurt Nishimura. Utilizing live action, animation and motion graphics, O Valencia! is an original and affecting music video that transcends what would appear to be the limitations of the contest itself. Rather than simply animating the green screen footage, the video uses live-action scenes to adapt and subvert the tragic narrative of forbidden love provided by the song. Creating a love affair between a girl and a television set introduces an element of the absurd, but it is not played for laughs, and result is an odd sweetness and dare we say “chemistry” between the two leads.

As for the green screen footage itself, Nishimura, with a last minute assist from his friend Adam Long of Paper House Films, spices it up with flashy-looking motion graphics so that it may play on the television, ingeniously, using the band and the first-person narration of the song to provide our TV lover his “voice”.

Attending the Art Institute of Portland, Nishimura heard about the contest from a school newsletter with only two weeks to go before the deadline, and the quick turnaround can be seen in certain elements of the video. Set design is bland and lacking, and the graphic match of the window in the video and in the song, is a bit cringe inducing. Some of the sequences also suffer from a lack of shots, which in turn handicaps the editing process, making it less dynamic than we expect from a music video. Yet this is to be expected on a quick shoot, and the most important elements—confident direction and excellent cinematography— are fully on display. Indeed, Nishimura is a true talent as his latest music video Silence by the artist Olivia Broadfield attests.

O Valencia! played on MTVU while another video directed by the band’s longtime collaborator Aaron Stewart was made as an official version. Nishimura was aware that this official video was being made even as the contest was going on, but ultimately it’s a shame that the band nor record company had faith in their own promotion, because Nishimura’s entry, while on a different scale, is every bit as memorable. While companies want to use the web, many don’t actually believe in it. Many people feel that the democratization of content producing via the web is wishful thinking because there just isn’t the content and talent out there. Sometimes I think the same thing when I’m watching repetitive film after film online, but this video and Nishimura himself are the perfect rebuttal to that brand of thinking.