What if the graphics in a music video were driven by the music, instead of a filmmaker?
At last year’s TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference, Jakob Trollback - director of the highly innovative motion graphics studio Trollback+Company - gave a talk and showed a sample of a different approach to take for music videos. His idea is that the video could and should be an expression of the song, not an expression of a filmmaker’s high concept, or for that matter the low concept of MTV demographics. The video above realizes this vision with the song Moonlight in Glory by David Byrne and Brian Eno from their groundbreaking album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Trollback isn’t the first to take this approach. Imaginary Forces created a legendy piece honoring film soundtracks for the Oscars which also used abstract graphics apparently motivated by the music, while even earlier Digital Kitchen made a great piece for Sony’s digital theatre sound system which was very similar in flavor to the piece above (if anyne can dig up a link to video of either piece, I’ll add it here). But it’s an interesting, thoughtful approach nonetheless.
It’s fun to see music videos that are “outside of the box” and it makes sense for element to work together in a music video. I always respect the ones that break the status quo.
Not sure about the Digital Kitchen video, but here’s a YouTube link for the Moonlight in Glory video:
The piece I was thinking about was by Imaginary Forces, and it was their animation for the Best Score award at the Academy Awards a few years ago. Still looking for a link an online movie. Although that reminds me that Digital Kitchen made a great animation for a theatre digital sound system; was it Sony DTS?