Yesterday, Bob Dylan released his first official video for ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ using interactive technology to make the video a viral sensation. The digital company Interlude partnered with Pulse Films and Walter Pictures to complete this project. Interlude established its street cred by winning multiple MTV O Music Awards for Most Innovative Video, thus this company was perfect to make the idea for this video a reality.
The finished product was created with Interlude’s innovative software called Treehouse. This software company provides data migration, replication, and integration services for multi-faceted environments
Interlude's expertise includes designing and developing video technology with digital media techniques that aid in making creative media like Dylan's video.
The video features 16 channels that imitate what one would regularly find on television, like news, sports, and scripted programs. On each channel, every character appears to be lip-synching the song’s lyrics. The company filmed the channels individually, with shooting locations varying from Israel, California, and New York. The production team then combined each piece of video footage to create a montage-like sequence while using Treehouse software.
There are buttons on the lower panel of the video’s screen, including the up and down keyboard buttons that are used to change between channels. An info bar appears when changing the channels, displaying the channel’s number, name, and description. Just like watching a real television, viewers can flip through these channels through using the keyboard or mouse while the video is playing for an interactive experience.
Director Vania Heymann is a viral video expert, whose previous projects include commercials for Pepsi and American Express. In an interview he said that “the effect can only be surrealistic if the channels are realistic.” “In reality, channel-flipping is a very passive act. You're sitting back in your house, doing nothing. We wanted to make it an active thing, reediting the song itself to make a new version.”
If someone were to watch all of the content in its entirety, the video would span to an hour and fifteen minutes.
Heymann told Mashable that this video is a satire of our media-overloaded world of consumable content: “I'm using the medium of television to look back right at us – you're flipping yourself to death with switching channels [in real life].”
On the day the video was unveiled, it received a whopping million unique visitors, gaining participation from 90% of visitors as they actively flipped through channels.
It is a strong possibility that more channels will be added to the video in the future.
Story via Rolling Stone, Mashable
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