Band Makes 'Magic Eye' Music Video

Band Makes 'Magic Eye' Music Video

A Canadian rock band figured out a way for a music video to go viral without twerking, breaking the law, or hiring models.

Young Rival just released the video for its single “Black Is Good.” Apparently Magic Eye is even better. Remember the 90’s phenomenon? There were books of Magic Eye illustrations, which challenged viewers to see a hidden picture or message through a pattern.

That is exactly what the indie rock band is attempting to do in its new video. In the YouTube description, Young Rival breaks down the techniques behind the process.

“A stereogram is an image which, when viewed with two eyes, using one of several different techniques, produces the illusion of depth perception,” writes the band. “Some of you will already be familiar with the autostereogram, which was popularized by the Magic Eye book series in the 1990s. These are made on computers, and use subtle changes in a repeating pattern to combine depth information for both eyes into one single image.”

The trio, comprised of lead singer Aron D’Alesio, bassist John Smith and drummer Noah Fralick, advises that to see their video viewers must “defocus their eyes, tricking the brain into seeing the slight variations in the repeating pattern as depth information.” There’s even a tool placed at the beginning of the piece that might help the viewer relax his or her eyes.

For the effect to be seen you must watch the piece in 1080p HD. Canadian cinematographer Jared Raab directed the video; Tomasz Dysinki handled the art and programming. The song “Black Is Good” is lifted from Young Rival’s 2012 LP, Stay Young. Its video has over 670,000 views. Young Rival has one other video from a year ago with more hits. The next most popular upload only has about 60,000 views.