A novel idea and a good music video can do great things for a band’s profile.
Just ask The Paper Kites, whose hypnotic clip went viral overseas, gaining some high-level international exposure for the Melbourne indie folk group.
Considering the amount of work and creative juices that clearly went into a Japanese group’s latest video, it’s likely to get them some major attention beyond their borders too, as well as once again proving that crowdfunding can generate some pretty amazing work.
The clip for ‘Life Is Music’, the new single from Tokyo ‘hybrid pop’ trio SOUR is not only a visual treat, but combines antiquated animation techniques with modern digital technology to great effect.
The video takes the idea of the phenakistoscope – a vintage illustrated disc used to create moving pictures (and a close cousin to the Zoetrope) – and applies to actual CDs, taking a crude flip book style of animation and transferring it across to a smooth video medium to help bring to life the natty pop tune’s themes of “the circle of life, and how music is its rhythm maker,” as Spoon – Tamago (via Gizmodo) reports.
Rather than being a dense meditation however, its a feast of cute, spritely eye-candy as notes, lyrics, and even band members warp and bounce about, and be sure to stick around for the brilliant finale.
While it might look like the band achieved the phenakistoscope effect with computer animation, SOUR – with the help of directors Masashi Kawamura and Kota Iguchi – actually took the ‘suffer for your art’ option, taking the fiddly path of filming 189 separate spinning CDs to create ‘Life Is Music’.
A making of video (which you can view at the bottom) documents how individual animated loops were designed on wedges, at 17 frames per second to match the song’s 105 BPM tempo, before a computer program transformed each wedge/frame onto a CD layout, which was then physically printed and filmed as it spun in place; as well as rotoscoping footage of the SOUR band members: French-born, British-raised singer/guitarist Hoshijima, bassist Sohey, and German-born, Spanish-raised drummer/noise-maker Takahashi cable.
The entire project was made with the support of crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter, and Japanese equivalent GreenFunding, raising finances through the help of fans; offering the chance to own one of the 189 CDs used in the music video for a pledge of US$ 70 or more.
The remaining animated CDs are also available for purchase on SOUR’s official website for ¥3,000 (approx AU$ 32) as “numbered limited edition art discs, so the fans can own a piece of the music video,” write the band.
‘Life Is Music’ is actually the second collaboration between Sour and director Masashi Kawamura, who similarly used crowdfunding to produce another highly creative music video using social media and fan interaction for their 2010 single ‘Mirror‘.
All in all, 2013 is proving to be a great year for creative music videos. There’s been the awesome interactive video that lets you control how drunk the band gets as they perform, one of the most bizarrely NSFW videos ever that demonstrates why you shouldn’t leave a frustrated teenager alone at home, and Dutch band Light Light spawned a viral hit with their amazing online game-come-clip that ‘crowdsourced’ fan’s mouse cursors instead of their funds.
