Most people’s interaction with the band Yello is from John Hugh’s film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” with the song “Oh Yeah”. To be perfectly honest I didn’t realize Boris Blank and Dieter Meier were still together as a group and producing new music. With that said, they are and they have a new music video that was produced by Dirk Koy, and it’s a hypnotic piece of animation that goes perfectly with Yello’s sound. The timing of the animation to the music is absolutely spot on, and the song can be a bit of an earworm. You have been warned.
Music Video
Hypnotic, Euphoric, Minimalistic.
Over the last year I have noticed an emerging visual trend that has started popping up in all sorts of videos, and will probably make it’s way to the rest of the creative world. It is a black and white, lo-fi, grainy, not quite 8-bit look. It reminds me of 1980’s video camera footage that has been mashed up with a sort of hand-drawn style. I say sort of, because like in the video below it is obviously digital. The lines and shapes have a hand-drawn quality to them, but they are to clean. Like the art brushes that come with Adobe illustrator. Then there is the background texture, in this case paper, but in a number of other videos I’ve seen it’s is fine digital noise. Fake signal noise that has been added to the clip to give it a dirty analog look. I’m curious how long it’ll be before this makes it’s way to mainstream advertising, at which point we can add it to the “jumped the shark” list like so many other trends of late. (sketchbook, stop motion, hyper color, 8-bit graphics and sound…)
By the way, this is quite hypnotic. Consider yourself warned.
Coldplay’s Up&Up is a visual treat.
I’m not really a Coldplay fan, but I have to give them credit for the video below. Actually I have to give credit to directors Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia plus their crew that produced it. Coldplay just stars in it. This is a wonderful blend of vintage film, green screen work, CGI, compositing, and animation. If you love Coldplay, turn up the volume and sing along. If you don’t turn off the sound and just watch the visuals. They are pretty captivating, and engaging. In the Vimeo credits, there is a list of artists that inspired the visuals. I have pasted them below the video. Oh, and if you are curious about how many people were involved in making this, click through to Vimeo and take a look at the crew involved.
Inspired by the art of:
Victoria Siemer, Sammy Slabbinck, Karen Lynch, Sarah Eisenlohr, Joe Webb, Jeff Hendrickson, Katie Dutch, Linder Sterling, Kieron “cur3es” Cropper, Beth Hoeckel, Eugenia Loli, Mariano Peccinetti, Shang Chengxiang, Charlie Davoli, Artem Rhads Cheboha, Fran Rodriguez, Felipe Posada, Jay Riggio, Ser Sinestésico, Marina Molares, Merve Ozaslan, Julien Pacaud, Angelo Vazquez, Terry Ringler, Djuno Tomsni, John Stezaker, Richard Hamilton, Hannah Höch, and of course Rene Magritte.
Fast Romantics and Fred Astaire Dance on the Ceiling.
I don’t post music video stuff very often. Music videos get a ton of exposure and mostly people are interested in the band and not what it took to put the video together. The video below from Fast Romantics is an exception. Taking quite possibly is Fred Astaire’s most famous dance scene (1951’s Royal Wedding) where Astaire dances on the walls and ceiling of his hotel room, director Matthew Angus seamlessly blends the original footage with the new shots. If you haven’t seen the original sequence, I have added it below as well. This is absolutely fantastic.
Modular 4 