By Erica Rocha
erica14rocha.wordpress.com
If you thought a 10 minute music video was too long for a song, grab a chair, a couple of snacks, and get comfortable because there is a 24-hour long music video.
The producer of music hits, such as Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke and Get Lucky by Daft Punk, is at it again with what is being recognized as the world’s first 24-hour music video.
Producer Pharrell Williams helped produce, and sing, the song Happy, for the animated movie Despicable Me 2. In the movie, the main character Gru sings Happy when he falls in love. The song is originally three minutes and 53 seconds long but was looped about 400 times for the video which is uploaded on a website titled 24hoursofhappy.com. The video currently has about 5 million views.
The day long video starts at the time corresponding to the local time the viewer is in. The website is in the shape of a yellow clock with the time in the middle and sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight labeled in yellow. As with any other music video, there are options to skip forward or backward into the video and a comment section. The comments are time-stamped and linked to the video and can be seen as an overlay at the time the comment was made. Along with that section, there are yellow dots in the clock that appear with an icon of Williams labeled “P” for Pharrell as the mouse hovers over the dot. This allows the viewer to skip into the sections where Williams appears dancing. The singer dances in the beginning of every hour with a new outfit each time.
Being a 24-hour music video it may seem difficult to figure out what should be happening in the video. This video is mainly on people dancing in what seems to be the happiest mood ever, which is not a bad theme for a song titled Happy. Although Williams does dance in the video, he only appears at the top of each hour for one loop of the song and then 14 other performances. The others in the video include hundreds of dancers and not to mention the famous people such as Steve Carell (actor that plays Gru in Despicable Me), Tyler the Creator, Jamie Foxx and his family, Magic Johnson, and more.
The people are what really make this video interesting to watch. For example, the viewer can see Magic Johnson in his house with all his trophies, Williams greeting fans as he dances past them, Jamie Foxx using his daughter as a prop as they walk down a railroad, or the minions dancing down a road. The amount of distinct dancers and their personalities is also interesting to see. There are young children dressed as hipsters and ballerinas, an old man with a white beard thrusting his hips like Elvis, and much more.
In total there were about 400 dancers that danced to the song. Each loop was recorded in a single take. Despite this, the video was well-recorded with minor errors such as random people walking in front of the recording camera.
The video project was directed by a company called We Are From LA, and produced by Iconoclast. If viewers would rather see a shorter version Williams uploaded a four minute and eight second long official music video onto his iamOTHER YouTube channel, which highlights parts of the 24-hour video. Although it is best viewed on the website as it was intended to be.
Although a 24-hour music video seems innovative, Williams is not the only artist to experiment with their creative ideas. Bob Dylan released an interactive music video to Like A Rolling Stone just days before Williams released Happy. Lady Gaga created an app for her new album ARTPOP, and Arcade Fire released a video which could be controlled by the viewer using their smartphones.
Either way major credit has to be given to Williams and his staff for pulling all-nighters and walking miles to create a 24 hour music video. Although it is long, it remains interesting throughout. What makes the video so easy to watch is the happy mood of the dancers, it’s almost impossible not to experience the happy vibe the people create. The song also captures interest. As the video processes it only gets more addicting.
