How Chris Dane Owens Finally Turned His Campy ‘Shine on Me’ Music Video Into a Feature Film — 15 Years and Millions of Dollars Later

variety.com:

Alex Ritman Back in 2008, a music video landed on YouTube — then still largely in its infancy and mostly dominated by amateur video footage — and caused a bit of a stir, amassing a cult following and 1 million views.

More than 15 years on, the video has morphed — extremely slowly — into a full-length feature film. Chris Dane Owens‘ upbeat love song “Shine on Me” was already a catchy slice of rock with some heavy ’80s inspirations.

But it was the epic accompanying video — which he made for $70,000, no small sum in today’s music video world — that proved to be the real hit, largely for squeezing into its four minutes practically every clichéd trope and inspiration from popular swords-and-sorcery fantasy entertainment. “The Princess Bride” features prominently, but then there are elements of “Xena,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Dungeons and Dragons” and many, many more.

Among a (snow-topped, possibly volcanic) mountain of gloriously cheesy visuals — most made using green screen with the help of “Beetlejuice” and “E.T.” effects legend Robert Short — are long-haired heroes (including Owens himself) on horseback, bodice-wearing fair maidens, slow-motion swordfights, evil witches witching in trios, good witches floating around in trios, fire-breathing dragons, frost-covered ice kingdoms, magic glowing books, exploding pirate ships, plenty of capes, some sort of regal ball, a villain in a Dr.