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Sam Dunn



Posts: 16   Visited by: 83 users
04.01.2012 - 05:18
mcneely

In case you haven't heard Sam Dunn is a anthropologist and film-maker that work only with the culture of heavy metal. He has made the movies Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, Globel Metal, Iron Maiden: Flight 666, Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, and is working on a new documentary about Satan in popular culture.

Now I like the guy and getting to see metal in other cultures, but there have been some harsh comments from other metalheads about him. What is your opinion?
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04.01.2012 - 05:26
Troy Killjoy
perfunctionist
My opinion is that the guy doesn't even deserve a thread here.

Although it does make for a good place to make fun of him for calling Opeth "goth metal".
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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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04.01.2012 - 05:43
JCJen7

Eh, I think he deserves a spot here if it turns out people wanna talk about him. I mean, has Heavy Metal ever had a real fan out there making movies and a TV series ("Metal Evolution")?

Oh, and if you type "Opeth" into Youtube, and watch the music videos for Burden, Harvest, and listen to Windowpane (the first 3 that come up), well, they look/kinda-sound gothic.
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04.01.2012 - 19:12
Eve ofApocalypse

I like his documentaries, he does a good job of conveying the passion we fans have for metal.
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04.01.2012 - 19:16
NLthrasher

I think his Rush documentary is quite outstanding, it shows the whole history of Rush concise and there is some very nice old and new footage. I think A headbangers journey and Flight 666 were just ok.
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05.01.2012 - 02:20
lordchadi

I never heard about him before
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05.01.2012 - 02:39
Milena
gloom cookie
Written by NLthrasher on 04.01.2012 at 19:16

I think A headbangers journey... were just ok.

I guess you can't make a really good documentary about a topic as vast as the history of heavy metal so I say he did a nice job at explaining how a part of the experience of being into metal is like. About the silly genre definitions, I've been informed in another thread that they weren't actually made by him, but by some other guy.
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05.01.2012 - 02:49
NLthrasher

Written by Milena on 05.01.2012 at 02:39

Written by NLthrasher on 04.01.2012 at 19:16

I think A headbangers journey... were just ok.

I guess you can't make a really good documentary about a topic as vast as the history of heavy metal so I say he did a nice job at explaining how a part of the experience of being into metal is like. About the silly genre definitions, I've been informed in another thread that they weren't actually made by him, but by some other guy.

just like you said, he did a really good job but because the topic it ended up just as an ok documentary.
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05.01.2012 - 15:21
Fenrisborg
Account deleted
I think his movies are a good introduction to metal, but aren't much use for anything else. For a life-long metal fan his films contain a lot of obvious and bizarre errors, not to mention the fact that he has a very odd focus on the extreme subgenres (Gorgoroth instead of Darkthrone/Burzum/Mayhem and Cannibal Corpse instead of Death/Possessed etc). I might remember things wrong, but does he even discuss thrash? I'm pretty sure he doesn't.
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05.01.2012 - 15:49
Vombatus
Potorro
Yep, headbanger's journey is ok for a (very) fast explanation of metal. You find all the stereotypes (Wacken, BM=satan, beginning with Sabbath, blablabla) but for metalheads, there is nothing new (and his genre definition is...bad).

I don't think documentaries about "metal in general" are very good. I do enjoy the more "anecdote-like" ones.
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18.11.2014 - 02:20
Darth Satanious
Post Destroyer
I have seen his documentaries and the TV series and although I consider them to be highly entertaining I can't help think that they fail to expose clearly the difference between Metal sub-genres.

I feel like these works could have worked a little more by putting a guy/band in the documentaties whenever they talk about a new subgenre within the progress of the film and have them play a piece of music showing how each subgenre sounds.

Something like Dunn narrating: "Since we are talking about Black Metal, here is an audible presentation of how the Black Metal sound goes" and a guy goes and plays guitars or something. He could then confront that sound to the other subgenres and emphasize each subgenre style by differentiation.

Sometimes it feels like Dunn doesn't want to go too deep in explanation and appears vague, for whatever reason.

Maybe Dunn's aims his work for people that don't need an explanation of Metal sounds, I don't know. But then I believe that documentaries are meant to be explanatory and should be constructed with a mentality that people who don't know jack shit of the subject will watch and need to understand.
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18.11.2014 - 12:33
raveneffect

I actually like his work and i think he does a good job at it.
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29.11.2014 - 08:47
Jtbmetal123

I think he does a great job, I like every documentary he's filmed so far.
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28.01.2015 - 05:40
Amy

He makes documentaries as a metalhead for metalheads. I really liked Flight 666 when I was a little girl because I watched his movies and that's how I realized I'm not alone and that there are plenty of people like me, all I need to do is find them.
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28.01.2015 - 21:08
Azarath
Free as a.. Fish
I like his work. The Rush documentary, in particular, is excellent.
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09.03.2015 - 22:41
ADIresiduos

I've seen his documentaries and they're entertaining; like someone here at this thread mentioned before, he does explains some stuff the we metal fans already know, but of course it's meant for people who are not so in-deep in metal: history, sounds, sub-genres, etc.
One thing he's got going for him, IMO, is that before him I don't recall anybody doing a documentary of this type, about heavy metal music as the main subject. There have been a few in the past, but his are very complete and comprehensive. He did a nice job.
He might had some flaws but well, nobody's perfect.
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