Shynola Vs Gallagher

To really decide who has the best argument you have to look at both sides of the story. Because of the nature of the dispute i will look at the side who claims to have had their work stolen first, Gallagher.

Andy Gallagher's video is very well done. The use of chalk in his video is the biggest similarity to shynola's Strawberry swings. Some scenes in which the chalk is used can be seen as similar. Similar is as close as it gets. Dan Gallagher claims there are "striking similarities" between the two videos.(http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/22/coldplay-video)

Looking at these pictures side by side, yes they are similar, are they identical? no but the are clearly inspired by something in both cases.  

From Shynola's point of view they do also see the similarities " Looking back, it has enough similarities to Mr. Trevor's video itself."(http://www.shynola.com/originalityexplained.pdf). its nice to see them admit is is similar but they also explain that they did not see the video till it was mentioned " Having never seen Mr. Trevor's video before, we can categorically deny that his video was any influence on our video." (same place as above). The rest of the site has loads of pictures showing the similarities of the works but also shows how they got the inspiration for their piece without watching Gallaghers piece.

Looking at both videos its clear to see that they are similar to each other but i think personally its is wrong to criticise Shynola of stealing an idea when they are not identical. Yes in many situations people have claimed that because its similar its a direct breach of copyright. Both films have their own merits and in some appearances they do look similar. But that is the case for some very small clips in the whole films and not a huge percentage.