Radiohead made headlines months ago when they let fans determine how much they wanted to pay to download Radiohead's latest album In Rainbows. They're pushing the limits again. The music video for a song off that same album, "House of Cards" is pretty unconventional too.
Instead of using cameras, the music video was shot using lasers. Calm down — no rock stars were injured in the creation of this video. Using new multimedia technologies from Geometric Informatics and Velodyne Lidar, a laser scanning image was used to capture the live action.
The video, produced by James Frost, isn't out yet, but we can't wait to see it. Here's how it was produced.
From a press release about the project: "The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to
capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render
the performances of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, the female lead, and
several partygoers. The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to
capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and
shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute, capturing all of
the exterior scenes and wide party shots."
Thom Yorke said, "I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn't
meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do
with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real
life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just
mathematical points — and how strangely emotional it ended up being."
Doesn't it seem that music videos are always the first to introduce new techniques? Let's hope they were profitable enough from the sale of the album to continue pushing the envelope. —Leslie Shapiro
See CNN's interview with Frost here
