- Brand
- Sony Music
- Media Type
- Interactive TV
- Music Video
- Viral
- Web Film
- Product Category
- Music
- Country
- UK
- Source
- News
- Tags
- Music Video
- interactive
- API
- Context
Sony Music London has created an interactive music video for American artist Lissie that adds a little context to your viewing experience. Produced by Simon Poon Tip, who you might remember from such music videos as Kasabian Football Hero, it utilises a Google Maps API, a live weather feed and the optional ability to geo-locate you Enemy of the State style through the magic of HTML5. It was built by developers Half Cyborg, London.
What this all adds up to is a music video with weather matching the same sunny day or downpour outside your very window, a cute idea. When you land on the microsite a pop up requests the use of your location, which then correlates with a live online weather feed - so if it's raining cats and dogs in your neck of the woods Lisse and her fellow band members will don rain macs in the midst of a downpour. Likewise, if the trees outside your office are bending to and fro in a stiff breeze the video will reflect this with a rather windswept looking band. Overall five different types of weather conditions were shot, all using in camera effects and no post production.
A big part of the team that worked on this were young creatives Wilf Eddings and his partner (and former Contagious intern) Luke Wicker.
Direction came from Sony Music Creative Directors Steve Milbourne and Phil Clandillon, and Contagious was interested to hear this experienced duos thoughts on the state of music videos and the opportunities PC-based viewing has created. Here's what they had to say:
'In the old days we sat on our sofas and watched MTV and were shown the latest music videos as chosen by a scheduler, from there we'd gain interest in the artist - this was our gateway into music.
'Now, with the absence of schedulers, music videos (especially for artists who don't have an established fan base) need to be interesting with a reason, or tell a story, or have something of interest that will make an audience share and talk about it. The audience itself has become the influencer that was once the domain of the scheduler.
'The fact that a lot of music videos are now consumed at the computer, means there is so much room to try new things, and people should be experimenting in that... without becoming formulaic but trying to find ways that enhance the user's experience of the music and the artist. Essentially, it's not that all videos now need to be interactive, but all videos should be interesting, relevant to the audience you're trying to reach and tell a story, or allow others to tell a story about it.
There's a lot of talk in the industry about the decline of music TV and dwindling viewers of music videos... and what sort of things we should be doing to counter it. In actuality, people are watching music videos more than ever.'
Check it out at lissie.com/weather
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