Thursday, 19 March 2015

Sound Visualisation: Gnarls Barkley

I decided to look into animated sound a bit further, this time I picked the video to Gnarls Barkleys "Crazy".
"Crazy" is the debut single by Gnarls Barkley, a musical collaboration between Danger Mouse and CeeLo Green, taken from their 2006 debut album St. Elsewhere. It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, and topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand and other countries.
Going along with the psychiatric theme of the song, Gnarls Barkley's music video for "Crazy" is done in the style of the Rorschach inkblot test. Animated, mirrored inkblots morph into another, while taking on ambiguous shapes. Both Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse appear in the shapes, as do the band's gunshot/heart logo, "Satan", a cranium and various animals, including centipedes, birds, bats, spiders, and insects.

The inkblot illustrations were done by art director and motion graphic designer Bryan Louie, whose other works include commercial campaigns for the Scion tC, and produced by motion design studio Blind, Inc. The music video for "Crazy" was directed by Robert Hales, who had previously directed music videos for Jet, Nine Inch Nails and Richard Ashcroft, amongst others.

The video was nominated for three 2006 MTV Video Music Awards: Best Group Video, Best Direction, and Best Editing, and won the latter two. It was also nominated for a 2006 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video, but lost to "We Are Your Friends" by Justice vs. Simian.

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