Mind-blowing music video created using 350 faces and 4,000 photos took 17 days to produce
Last week, the Paper Kites, an indie folk quintet based out of Melbourne, Australia, released the official video for "Young," the first single from their recently released debut album, "States."
The mesmerizing music video, shot over the course of a week last month by director Darcy Prendergast and photographer Oli Sansom, features more than 350 faces and 4,000 photographs, and took 10 days of postproduction work to assemble.
Oh Yeah Wow, the Brunswick production house behind "Young," wrote on Facebook that it used "data-wrangled" digital folders — one for each mouth shape — to link the stop-motion animation. "If we needed an 'e,' then it was straight to the 'e' folder to find the appropriate shape, big/small/happy/sad/partially open, etc.," the producers explained.
Getting volunteers to participate was easy — the studio simply put out an invite on Facebook. Subject line: "WE WANT YOUR FACE":
The idea basically involves photographing hundreds of unique looking faces, each person shot multiple times in a variety of facial poses, replicating various mouth shapes in accordance with the lyrics. Using the almighty power of stop motion animation — we will then cycle through 500+ people who, when edited together, will sing the song.
At the end of production, you will be able to download and keep your own professional portrait. PLUS you get to be a part of what we hope will be a creative landmark, shared around the world.
The video has just 20,000 views on YouTube. But if the enthusiasm of Internet users is any indication, it's destined to become a viral hit.
"I found a lot of amusement in pausing the video every few seconds to see who I paused on," wrote one viewer.
"Absolutely gorgeous!" another viewer added. "Very entertaining to pause repeatedly trying to find Melbourne friends!"
"Made my brain explode," one viewer wrote. "In the nicest way possible."
But not everyone loved watching it.
"This started to make me feel ill for some reason," one Reddit user wrote.
"I couldn't even make it past the 45 second mark," wrote another. "My brain really did not like watching it."
"Wow, every hipster in the world in one video," another Reddit user quipped. "Impressive."
