So you’ve probably heard by now that Radiohead’s got a new video out that was shot using some newfangled laser beam space technology. House Of Cards features real time 3D recording instead of cameras, utilizing structured light and Lidar laser-enhanced scanners to model Thom Yorke’s pretty face and provide a headache-inducing visual narrative accompaniment to the song. 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius, 900 times per minute, capturing all of the exterior scenes and wide party shots. Stimulating new ways to explore the godly contours of Thom’s face!! Yippee.
Here’s what Thom Yorke, the wonk-eyed goldenboy of warbly dissonance himself, had to say about it: I always liked the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points- and how strangely emotional it ended up being.
You can download the data for the video and make your own LazrRemx video to upload to the House Of Cards YouTube Group page. So far there’s only one up: Radiohead’s. Could it be that there’s actually a limit to the shit Radiohead fans would do to win the approval of their favorite band? Probably not- it’s more likely that nobody knows what the hell to do with all the data.
Either way, who cares? It’s kinda cool looking, but it’s a fuckin laser beam video, and once you get past the novelty it’s pretty boring.
Oh, and everybody can stop calling it cutting edge and groundbreaking. Justin Timberlake did this shit about a year ago:
Might even be a better song, too…
Don’t get me wrong- I fucking love Radiohead. I can specifically recall times and places where I first heard each of their last five records or so, and I’m probably going to be sexually quarantined for slandering my girlfriend’s favorite band. But c’mon already with all the fawning praise. The song’s not even that amazing. Besides, they’re never going to do it again, and it’s not cool enough for other bands to do it without looking like ripoffs. So here’s to another empty breakthrough, to be filed next to the band’s abandonment of the In Rainbows sales model.
Now let’s all go back to measuring our carbon footprints and hope they make it out to our town before Yorke realizes that his airplane ride over here creates more emissions than all our hipster rides put together.
July 15th, 2008 at 7:47 PM
Radiohead blows and so does the fact that they sold individual audio tracks for remixes on the iTunes store. Assholes.
July 18th, 2008 at 11:08 PM
they’re a headache for nothing worth the while
July 20th, 2008 at 8:00 AM
Timberlake’s video wasn’t made in this way. At least, I can’t find any indication it was. It looked cool, but it was a post-prod effect(s). The Radiohead video didn’t use video at all, instead using mathematical data from lasers scanning light variations (or something like that). So it might look similar, but what happens in House of Cards is quite different in terms of production and execution. Also, a more interesting tidbit is that the data was released for free - alas, you need to really know what to do with it to use create a video of your own.
So, it’s special in a geek cutting-edge type of way. Call it experimental self-indulgence. But I don’t think Justin’s video has any relevance to Radiohead’s.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 AM
Uhhhh….the video is a neat novelty that’s interesting to watch exactly once, and then never again. But I couldn’t even do that. I quit watching at about the 30 second mark. It was a bit boring, to be honest.
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:13 AM
I’m glad you caught the joke, James.