11 ms·

Stop motion video shot over 2 years with 288,000 jelly beans

477 points by swombat 15y ago

jaequery 15y ago
2 years ... for this? and people are complaining about the economy?
- jluan 15y ago
  Non-sequitur.
dholowiski 15y ago
No MVP here - they went all the way the first time. Be sure to switch to 1080p and go full screen, it's breathtaking. But it makes me wonder, what is the ROI on this? Will they really make back the wages of 30 people for 22 months, and how long will it take?
- alexwolfe 15y ago
  The ROI is creating something incredible that you can be proud of forever. This is art! I hope people will always have the courage to create amazing things without worrying about the financials.
  - topherjaynes 15y ago
    That (they had to have a good time making it), and the purely promotional reason of this is in their portfolio! If they we're bidding on a job for me and they showed me this I would throw money at them. Dedication, quality, and creativity.
  - TheHegemon 15y ago
    Well really they said it "only" took 1,357 hours. Which is roughly 62 hours a month. Even if the people were being paid $50/hour, which is unlikely considering I assume most of them will be volunteers, that comes out to about $50,000. They said they used 288,000 jelly beans. There is roughly 400 jelly beans per pound. You can buy bulk jelly beans for $85 for 10lbs. Which comes out to $61,200 for the jelly beans. I'm sure they could get a non-name brand or bulk discount so it could be much less. So definitely less $100,000 for the music video. They can make that money back pretty quickly if they become a YouTube partner and the video goes viral. They would only need about 50million views to pay back the costs of making the video. Plus, how can you put a price on art?
    - ghshephard 15y ago
      Your math is off on the Jelly beans. 288,000 / 400 = 720 Pounds. JellyBelly Jelly Beans Retail on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Jelly-Belly-Assorted-Flavors-3-Pound/dp/B000XK0FFW http://www.amazon.com/Jelly-Belly-Assorted-Flavors-3-Pound/d...) for $9/pound. So, even if they didn't buy them wholesale (hard to believe) - it's still only $6480 worth of jelly beans.
    - benjoffe 15y ago
      There's a plug for the 'jelly belly' brand at the end of the video where they show their logo, I'm pretty sure that means they would have either gotten them for free or they sponsored the video.
- daenz 15y ago
  The ROI is probably poor, but then again, many artists aren't in it for the ROI. More power to them.
- patio11 15y ago
  Will they really make back the wages of 30 people for 22 months The actual people moving the jelly beans into position were, according to the making-of video, unpaid. Music is like video games, movies, journalism, political campaigns, etc: grunt work gets done by an undercaste of young people "paying their dues" with the promise that they will be allowed to graduate to the interesting, high status stuff if they just stick with it a little while longer. (This is a lie.)
  - pyre 15y ago
    There's also just friends of friends that participate because they think that it's fun. I know of several people that would enjoy participating in such a project just because they find it fun.
- juiceandjuice 15y ago
  The ROI is name recognition and differentiation, with the goal of a recording contract.
  - Tloewald 15y ago
    She has four or five albums out and has gone viral before.
- MichaelApproved 15y ago
  That's not true, there were several versions to prove the concept. Before they went all out, they created a story board of each scene, then they animated it and then they went for it.
invisiblefunnel 15y ago
The behind the scenes video shows details of the process. I found it fascinating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH4MJAC2Tg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH4MJAC2Tg
- rorrr 15y ago
  I can think of many ways how to make this whole process much much easier. The amount of unnecessary work they did is just insane.
  - folkster 15y ago
    Agree. But that's what Art is about...
    - tlrobinson 15y ago
      Wasting time?
      - gaustin 15y ago
        Being authentic.
      - JonnieCache 15y ago
        Yes, in a sense. I am reminded of oscar wilde: "All art is useless." This is one of the only useful definitions of "art," which is otherwise a concept very tricky to pin down, it is that which serves no purpose other than to delight.
    - jklp 15y ago
      Real artists ship :p
      - scott_s 15y ago
        And they did.
hmigneron 15y ago
The fact that they had to finish shooting the whole thing to have something worth showing makes this even more impressive. They couldn't just stop halfway through and say good enough. For nearly two years they kept working on it and she couldn't really put on any weight, couldn't really age too much, etc. It really is dedication!
- dasil003 15y ago
  Of course if she did visibly age or gain weight it would be a cool effect.
  - MichaelApproved 15y ago
    Might be a cool concept for another video. Record a video over several years with the point being to show yourself growing up.
    - wotsrovert 15y ago
      This has already been done with photograghs: one photo per year. http://www.zonezero.com/zz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1292%3Athe-arrow-of-time&catid=8%3Aessays&lang=en http://www.zonezero.com/zz/index.php?option=com_content&...
georgieporgie 15y ago
Wow. Not to detract from it, but is the 1,357 hours combined man-hours, or start-to-finish hours?
freemarketteddy 15y ago
See this post is a testament to Hacker News's decline.Not because I think that post doesnt have something interesting or intellectually arousing to say.It absolutely does.I create things too and I understand the importance of creation especially when it takes two years to make something. The reason is because of how this post got on the front page of Hacker News.In normal circumstances I can bet that this post maybe would get like three votes in five hours.But in this case the poster is "swombat" who has a huge following on twitter and a lot of them are hnusers.I noticed an instant upsurge in votes after he posted this on his twitter page. Another reason is because "swombat" himself is also one of the top Hacker News users and when people see his name there chances of upvoting increases significantly.This I think is actually fair and he probably deserves a little more attention than the average hnuser.But what I vehemently object to is the use of twitter to gain traction. Here are some possible solutions that I can think of. 1) If a post gets a lot of traffic from twitter and other such social media websites ,it should work against it in the rank calculation algorithm. 2) Users be advised to not use their twitter or facebook following to gain traction on HackerNews.
- freemarketteddy 15y ago
  If you wish to disagree please do so but write down the reason for your disagreement.Also how is this against HN Comment guidelines? EDIT: Okay I get it. From HN Guidelines "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" Sorry I was not aware of that.
  - DougBTX 15y ago
    It's OK, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
    - freemarketteddy 15y ago
      So that means that my incompetence made me blind from the greatness of this post! Well its possible but I am not buying that right now. What I would buy is that maybe I have not reached a sufficient level of karma to comment on Hacker News administration.
thom 15y ago
As a cautionary tale about the waxing and waining relevance of various online properties, remember that Kina Grannis was more or less launched on Digg: http://indigitalmarketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/digg-helps-kina-grannis-get-on-the-super-bowl/ http://indigitalmarketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/digg-help...
- xpose2000 15y ago
  Holy shit, I remember that video. Man, I'm a nerd.
- zyb09 15y ago
  And she actually sings about the time, when you could find Ron Paul posts on Digg. That feels like a century ago.
ScottBurson 15y ago
Technically, of course, this is time-lapse video, not stop-motion. Stop-motion slows things down (hence the name); time-lapse speeds them up, which is clearly what's happened here. Terminological pickiness aside, this is very cool. I wasn't aware of Kina Grannis before, and probably would have stayed that way but for this video, so it seems to be accomplishing its purpose. Edited to add: the song is pretty, too.
- sukuriant 15y ago
  Stop motion (also known as stop action) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. [Wikipedia] [They set up a scene, took a photo]*numFrames. This is stop motion photography as much "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is.
- robterrell 15y ago
  That's just wrong. Overcraking (running the film through the camera faster than normal) slows motion down. Undercranking speeds it up. Stop-motion doesn't slow things down; it's a technique where you expose one frame of film, move something (usually a model) slightly, and expose the next frame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion Stop-motion animation examples include the original King Kong, Sinbad and all those other Ray Harryhausen films, the AT-ATs in Empire Strikes Back. (And there was also a technique called "Go motion" animation where the puppet was moved during the frame exposure, thus causing motion blur, and making for a much more realistic animation, which was used for the dragon in DragonSlayer and I think some of Return of the Jedi.) If you want to get really pedantic, probably the best term for this jellybean video is "pixilation". I know we use that word differently nowadays, but before computer graphics were common, "pixilation" was the term for stop-motion animated real-world objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixilation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixilation Thank you for letting my nearly pointless film degree not go entirely to waste.
  - ScottBurson 15y ago
    You're welcome. That's what I get for posting when tired... gotta get some sleep.
kpozin 15y ago
Very impressive video. The grammar nerd in me is also impressed how, for two years, no one managed to notice that the repeated phrase "we'll lay," although it rhymes in context, uses completely the wrong verb. (It should be "we'll lie.")
- mhartl 15y ago
  I noticed exactly the same thing. I've become increasingly alarmed at the decline of the lay/lie distinction in English, even in educated speech. In this case, though, I consoled myself that at least it created a rhyme. Contrast this to the chorus of "Truly Madly Deeply" by Australian pop-rock group Savage Garden: I want to stand with you on a mountain. I want to bathe with you in the sea. I want to lay like this forever, Until the sky falls down on me... They missed an opportunity. Here the grammatically correct lie gives a lovely rhyme between the middles of lines 3 and 4: I want to stand with you on a mountain. I want to bathe with you in the sea. I want to lie like this forever, Until the sky falls down on me...
  - npc 15y ago
    However, 'lay' does (half) rhyme with 'bathe', which provides a much needed connection between the 2nd and 3rd lines, I feel.
- wlievens 15y ago
  Artistic freedom, perhaps, if it suits the rhyme.
MichaelApproved 15y ago
"22 months, 1,357 hours, 30 people" If you consider that big budget music videos can have ~100 people working on it (casting, production crew and post crew) each putting in at least 12-16 hours, this falls right in line with the amount of people hours that's typical for a music label.
- henryprecheur 15y ago
  If you just look at the number of hours, it's "just" a full time job for a year: 8 hours a day * 200 working days = 1600 hours With 30 people working just a week (5 days), we're already at 1200 hours. Maybe they got their hours wrong? Or it's not that impressive (I'm a grumpy old man).
  - cbabraham 15y ago
    They didn't say the 1300 figure was people hours, they just said hours. So for each of those hours you probably much more people hours.
    - wlievens 15y ago
      Excellent point. I bet we (many of us professional software developers) are so used to the concept of man-hours that we may be grossly misinterpreting the 1300 hours figure. It could well be up to 1300 times 30 people. Spreading 1300 manhours for 30 people over 22 months seems a bit thinly spread as well, if you ask me.
pitdesi 15y ago
This is the type of thing that you wouldn't have done 10 years ago because noone would have found out about it. Reminds me of the Amazing Honda Accord commercial - the Cog... Rube Goldberg machine all done without CGI (5 months of pre-work, then 605 takes until they got to one that didn't screw up somewhere) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo They did a lot of work that they could've avoided with CGI, but where would the fun be? Making of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh4zWeUDW-E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh4zWeUDW-E Another good one that is similar in the sense that they went through a whole lot of trouble is the Sony Bravia commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NymcQJjPCs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NymcQJjPCs They did a lot of work that they could've avoided with CGI, but where would the fun be? BTW, it seems Jelly Belly was in on the fun a little bit... http://www.jellybelly-uk.com/bean-world/page/?id=47 http://www.jellybelly-uk.com/bean-world/page/?id=47 At the very least, I'd imagine that she didn't pay for the jelly beans
- derrybryson 15y ago
  Not really. Stop-motion music videos have been done quite a bit, especially 10 years ago and more. There was a time before CGI when artists shot "videos" on film and computers weren't capable of the things they are today. Consider the Peter Gabriel videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyc37aOqT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyc37aOqT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=F0FBi5Rv1ho http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=F0FBi5Rv1ho both of which feature various types of stop-motion animation as well as other effects. Also consider the works of Bruce Bickford whom Frank Zappa hired to work on several videos. This guy is a genius/savant, I don't know which. Zappa saw the genius and funded some incredible work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UgzNJfpfA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UgzNJfpfA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2fyvfX_gLo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2fyvfX_gLo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO4PlvIE6bk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO4PlvIE6bk You also might want to check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w and their other videos, which aren't stop-motion but are incredible videos made without CGI. There's tons more out there to find if you look.
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  Another one of Kina's videos also seem to go the artistic route - in this case using DVD cases as dominoes with a flip art effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840NbiFF1zM&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840NbiFF1zM&feature=relmf...
jquery 15y ago
Came for the jelly beans, stayed for the song.
queensnake 15y ago
This is what we'll be reduced to doing, post-Singularity.
- pyre 15y ago
  Producing art? Isn't that seen as a goal to aspire to? To create a society where nobody wants for anything, so that people are freed up to spend all of their time in the pursuit of art? This is the plot line of several Star Trek episodes as well as many SciFi short stories/novels.
suivix 15y ago
Two years of hard work to get about the equivalent page views of nudity. It must have felt rewarding for them though.
joshfraser 15y ago
I think the beauty comes from the simplicity of it. To a casual viewer, it's just a cute music video. It's when you realize the amount of work and attention to detail that went into it, that you have the emotional reaction that says "wow, they really cared about this". It's the same reaction I have with many of Apple's products. They look simple from a distance, but when you zoom in, you see a team of 30 people hand placing jelly beans to make something beautiful.
grusk 15y ago
See also: Coldplay - Strawberry Swing (shot on sidewalk chalk) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo Maxmaber Orkestar - Malinkovec Valzer (500 People in 100 Seconds - stop-motion video is a movie within a movie) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eqSZSO_sSE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eqSZSO_sSE Clarika - Bien Mérité (French stop-motion video with photographs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF9pMjfrpI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF9pMjfrpI
- Tloewald 15y ago
  How about "missionary man" by the eurythmics back in the 80s? http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-25142343/eurythmics_missionary_man_official_music_video/ http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-25142343/eurythmics_mission... ( doesn't play on is devices)
antirez 15y ago
It does not look better to what an algorithm or alike could have done with a lot less efforts.
jwcacces 15y ago
I would have gotten a robotic pick and place machine and sped that up a bit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5eR0eHknZk&t=0m18s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5eR0eHknZk&t=0m18s
- ralfd 15y ago
  YT comment: "Give it a knife and a hand!"

477 points by swombat 15y ago

jaequery 15y ago

2 years ... for this? and people are complaining about the economy?

jluan 15y ago
Non-sequitur.

dholowiski 15y ago

No MVP here - they went all the way the first time. Be sure to switch to 1080p and go full screen, it's breathtaking. But it makes me wonder, what is the ROI on this? Will they really make back the wages of 30 people for 22 months, and how long will it take?

alexwolfe 15y ago
The ROI is creating something incredible that you can be proud of forever. This is art! I hope people will always have the courage to create amazing things without worrying about the financials.
- topherjaynes 15y ago
  That (they had to have a good time making it), and the purely promotional reason of this is in their portfolio! If they we're bidding on a job for me and they showed me this I would throw money at them. Dedication, quality, and creativity.
- TheHegemon 15y ago
  Well really they said it "only" took 1,357 hours. Which is roughly 62 hours a month. Even if the people were being paid $50/hour, which is unlikely considering I assume most of them will be volunteers, that comes out to about $50,000. They said they used 288,000 jelly beans. There is roughly 400 jelly beans per pound. You can buy bulk jelly beans for $85 for 10lbs. Which comes out to $61,200 for the jelly beans. I'm sure they could get a non-name brand or bulk discount so it could be much less. So definitely less $100,000 for the music video. They can make that money back pretty quickly if they become a YouTube partner and the video goes viral. They would only need about 50million views to pay back the costs of making the video. Plus, how can you put a price on art?
  - ghshephard 15y ago
    Your math is off on the Jelly beans. 288,000 / 400 = 720 Pounds. JellyBelly Jelly Beans Retail on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Jelly-Belly-Assorted-Flavors-3-Pound/dp/B000XK0FFW http://www.amazon.com/Jelly-Belly-Assorted-Flavors-3-Pound/d...) for $9/pound. So, even if they didn't buy them wholesale (hard to believe) - it's still only $6480 worth of jelly beans.
  - benjoffe 15y ago
    There's a plug for the 'jelly belly' brand at the end of the video where they show their logo, I'm pretty sure that means they would have either gotten them for free or they sponsored the video.
daenz 15y ago
The ROI is probably poor, but then again, many artists aren't in it for the ROI. More power to them.
patio11 15y ago
Will they really make back the wages of 30 people for 22 months The actual people moving the jelly beans into position were, according to the making-of video, unpaid. Music is like video games, movies, journalism, political campaigns, etc: grunt work gets done by an undercaste of young people "paying their dues" with the promise that they will be allowed to graduate to the interesting, high status stuff if they just stick with it a little while longer. (This is a lie.)
- pyre 15y ago
  There's also just friends of friends that participate because they think that it's fun. I know of several people that would enjoy participating in such a project just because they find it fun.
juiceandjuice 15y ago
The ROI is name recognition and differentiation, with the goal of a recording contract.
- Tloewald 15y ago
  She has four or five albums out and has gone viral before.
MichaelApproved 15y ago
That's not true, there were several versions to prove the concept. Before they went all out, they created a story board of each scene, then they animated it and then they went for it.

invisiblefunnel 15y ago

The behind the scenes video shows details of the process. I found it fascinating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH4MJAC2Tg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIH4MJAC2Tg

rorrr 15y ago
I can think of many ways how to make this whole process much much easier. The amount of unnecessary work they did is just insane.
- folkster 15y ago
  Agree. But that's what Art is about...
  - tlrobinson 15y ago
    Wasting time?
    - gaustin 15y ago
      Being authentic.
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      Yes, in a sense. I am reminded of oscar wilde: "All art is useless." This is one of the only useful definitions of "art," which is otherwise a concept very tricky to pin down, it is that which serves no purpose other than to delight.
  - jklp 15y ago
    Real artists ship :p
    - scott_s 15y ago
      And they did.

hmigneron 15y ago

The fact that they had to finish shooting the whole thing to have something worth showing makes this even more impressive. They couldn't just stop halfway through and say good enough. For nearly two years they kept working on it and she couldn't really put on any weight, couldn't really age too much, etc. It really is dedication!

dasil003 15y ago
Of course if she did visibly age or gain weight it would be a cool effect.
- MichaelApproved 15y ago
  Might be a cool concept for another video. Record a video over several years with the point being to show yourself growing up.
  - wotsrovert 15y ago
    This has already been done with photograghs: one photo per year. http://www.zonezero.com/zz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1292%3Athe-arrow-of-time&catid=8%3Aessays&lang=en http://www.zonezero.com/zz/index.php?option=com_content&...

georgieporgie 15y ago

Wow. Not to detract from it, but is the 1,357 hours combined man-hours, or start-to-finish hours?

freemarketteddy 15y ago

See this post is a testament to Hacker News's decline.Not because I think that post doesnt have something interesting or intellectually arousing to say.It absolutely does.I create things too and I understand the importance of creation especially when it takes two years to make something. The reason is because of how this post got on the front page of Hacker News.In normal circumstances I can bet that this post maybe would get like three votes in five hours.But in this case the poster is "swombat" who has a huge following on twitter and a lot of them are hnusers.I noticed an instant upsurge in votes after he posted this on his twitter page. Another reason is because "swombat" himself is also one of the top Hacker News users and when people see his name there chances of upvoting increases significantly.This I think is actually fair and he probably deserves a little more attention than the average hnuser.But what I vehemently object to is the use of twitter to gain traction. Here are some possible solutions that I can think of. 1) If a post gets a lot of traffic from twitter and other such social media websites ,it should work against it in the rank calculation algorithm. 2) Users be advised to not use their twitter or facebook following to gain traction on HackerNews.

freemarketteddy 15y ago
If you wish to disagree please do so but write down the reason for your disagreement.Also how is this against HN Comment guidelines? EDIT: Okay I get it. From HN Guidelines "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" Sorry I was not aware of that.
- DougBTX 15y ago
  It's OK, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
  - freemarketteddy 15y ago
    So that means that my incompetence made me blind from the greatness of this post! Well its possible but I am not buying that right now. What I would buy is that maybe I have not reached a sufficient level of karma to comment on Hacker News administration.

thom 15y ago

As a cautionary tale about the waxing and waining relevance of various online properties, remember that Kina Grannis was more or less launched on Digg: http://indigitalmarketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/digg-helps-kina-grannis-get-on-the-super-bowl/ http://indigitalmarketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/digg-help...

xpose2000 15y ago
Holy shit, I remember that video. Man, I'm a nerd.
zyb09 15y ago
And she actually sings about the time, when you could find Ron Paul posts on Digg. That feels like a century ago.

ScottBurson 15y ago

Technically, of course, this is time-lapse video, not stop-motion. Stop-motion slows things down (hence the name); time-lapse speeds them up, which is clearly what's happened here. Terminological pickiness aside, this is very cool. I wasn't aware of Kina Grannis before, and probably would have stayed that way but for this video, so it seems to be accomplishing its purpose. Edited to add: the song is pretty, too.

sukuriant 15y ago
Stop motion (also known as stop action) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. [Wikipedia] [They set up a scene, took a photo]*numFrames. This is stop motion photography as much "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is.
robterrell 15y ago
That's just wrong. Overcraking (running the film through the camera faster than normal) slows motion down. Undercranking speeds it up. Stop-motion doesn't slow things down; it's a technique where you expose one frame of film, move something (usually a model) slightly, and expose the next frame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion Stop-motion animation examples include the original King Kong, Sinbad and all those other Ray Harryhausen films, the AT-ATs in Empire Strikes Back. (And there was also a technique called "Go motion" animation where the puppet was moved during the frame exposure, thus causing motion blur, and making for a much more realistic animation, which was used for the dragon in DragonSlayer and I think some of Return of the Jedi.) If you want to get really pedantic, probably the best term for this jellybean video is "pixilation". I know we use that word differently nowadays, but before computer graphics were common, "pixilation" was the term for stop-motion animated real-world objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixilation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixilation Thank you for letting my nearly pointless film degree not go entirely to waste.
- ScottBurson 15y ago
  You're welcome. That's what I get for posting when tired... gotta get some sleep.

kpozin 15y ago

Very impressive video. The grammar nerd in me is also impressed how, for two years, no one managed to notice that the repeated phrase "we'll lay," although it rhymes in context, uses completely the wrong verb. (It should be "we'll lie.")

mhartl 15y ago
I noticed exactly the same thing. I've become increasingly alarmed at the decline of the lay/lie distinction in English, even in educated speech. In this case, though, I consoled myself that at least it created a rhyme. Contrast this to the chorus of "Truly Madly Deeply" by Australian pop-rock group Savage Garden: I want to stand with you on a mountain. I want to bathe with you in the sea. I want to lay like this forever, Until the sky falls down on me... They missed an opportunity. Here the grammatically correct lie gives a lovely rhyme between the middles of lines 3 and 4: I want to stand with you on a mountain. I want to bathe with you in the sea. I want to lie like this forever, Until the sky falls down on me...
- npc 15y ago
  However, 'lay' does (half) rhyme with 'bathe', which provides a much needed connection between the 2nd and 3rd lines, I feel.
wlievens 15y ago
Artistic freedom, perhaps, if it suits the rhyme.

MichaelApproved 15y ago

"22 months, 1,357 hours, 30 people" If you consider that big budget music videos can have ~100 people working on it (casting, production crew and post crew) each putting in at least 12-16 hours, this falls right in line with the amount of people hours that's typical for a music label.

henryprecheur 15y ago
If you just look at the number of hours, it's "just" a full time job for a year: 8 hours a day * 200 working days = 1600 hours With 30 people working just a week (5 days), we're already at 1200 hours. Maybe they got their hours wrong? Or it's not that impressive (I'm a grumpy old man).
- cbabraham 15y ago
  They didn't say the 1300 figure was people hours, they just said hours. So for each of those hours you probably much more people hours.
  - wlievens 15y ago
    Excellent point. I bet we (many of us professional software developers) are so used to the concept of man-hours that we may be grossly misinterpreting the 1300 hours figure. It could well be up to 1300 times 30 people. Spreading 1300 manhours for 30 people over 22 months seems a bit thinly spread as well, if you ask me.

pitdesi 15y ago

This is the type of thing that you wouldn't have done 10 years ago because noone would have found out about it. Reminds me of the Amazing Honda Accord commercial - the Cog... Rube Goldberg machine all done without CGI (5 months of pre-work, then 605 takes until they got to one that didn't screw up somewhere) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo They did a lot of work that they could've avoided with CGI, but where would the fun be? Making of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh4zWeUDW-E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh4zWeUDW-E Another good one that is similar in the sense that they went through a whole lot of trouble is the Sony Bravia commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NymcQJjPCs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NymcQJjPCs They did a lot of work that they could've avoided with CGI, but where would the fun be? BTW, it seems Jelly Belly was in on the fun a little bit... http://www.jellybelly-uk.com/bean-world/page/?id=47 http://www.jellybelly-uk.com/bean-world/page/?id=47 At the very least, I'd imagine that she didn't pay for the jelly beans

derrybryson 15y ago
Not really. Stop-motion music videos have been done quite a bit, especially 10 years ago and more. There was a time before CGI when artists shot "videos" on film and computers weren't capable of the things they are today. Consider the Peter Gabriel videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyc37aOqT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqyc37aOqT0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=F0FBi5Rv1ho http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=F0FBi5Rv1ho both of which feature various types of stop-motion animation as well as other effects. Also consider the works of Bruce Bickford whom Frank Zappa hired to work on several videos. This guy is a genius/savant, I don't know which. Zappa saw the genius and funded some incredible work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UgzNJfpfA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6UgzNJfpfA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2fyvfX_gLo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2fyvfX_gLo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO4PlvIE6bk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO4PlvIE6bk You also might want to check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w and their other videos, which aren't stop-motion but are incredible videos made without CGI. There's tons more out there to find if you look.
elliottcarlson 15y ago
Another one of Kina's videos also seem to go the artistic route - in this case using DVD cases as dominoes with a flip art effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840NbiFF1zM&feature=relmfu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840NbiFF1zM&feature=relmf...

jquery 15y ago

Came for the jelly beans, stayed for the song.

queensnake 15y ago

This is what we'll be reduced to doing, post-Singularity.

pyre 15y ago
Producing art? Isn't that seen as a goal to aspire to? To create a society where nobody wants for anything, so that people are freed up to spend all of their time in the pursuit of art? This is the plot line of several Star Trek episodes as well as many SciFi short stories/novels.

suivix 15y ago

Two years of hard work to get about the equivalent page views of nudity. It must have felt rewarding for them though.

joshfraser 15y ago

I think the beauty comes from the simplicity of it. To a casual viewer, it's just a cute music video. It's when you realize the amount of work and attention to detail that went into it, that you have the emotional reaction that says "wow, they really cared about this". It's the same reaction I have with many of Apple's products. They look simple from a distance, but when you zoom in, you see a team of 30 people hand placing jelly beans to make something beautiful.

grusk 15y ago

See also: Coldplay - Strawberry Swing (shot on sidewalk chalk) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo Maxmaber Orkestar - Malinkovec Valzer (500 People in 100 Seconds - stop-motion video is a movie within a movie) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eqSZSO_sSE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eqSZSO_sSE Clarika - Bien Mérité (French stop-motion video with photographs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF9pMjfrpI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF9pMjfrpI

Tloewald 15y ago
How about "missionary man" by the eurythmics back in the 80s? http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-25142343/eurythmics_missionary_man_official_music_video/ http://www.metacafe.com/watch/sy-25142343/eurythmics_mission... ( doesn't play on is devices)

antirez 15y ago

It does not look better to what an algorithm or alike could have done with a lot less efforts.

jwcacces 15y ago

I would have gotten a robotic pick and place machine and sped that up a bit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5eR0eHknZk&t=0m18s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5eR0eHknZk&t=0m18s

ralfd 15y ago
YT comment: "Give it a knife and a hand!"