blog
07/16/2008
awesome: radiohead's "house of cards" video
Posted by Annie Tsai

Radiohead's new music video, directed by James Frost, for "House of Cards" was created using all kinds of neat technology instead of cameras. Lasers were used to scan Thom Yorke, a party scene, and a cul de sac to gather three-dimensional data about these objects. The data was then rendered and manipulated to produce this amazing video.

This is not the first time Radiohead has done something outside the box. Last October, Radiohead initially released their album "In Rainbows", online through a pay-what-you-want system. This was after they finished out their record contract with EMI... so essentially, Radiohead served their own FU to the record industry. Word.

Look for a "Making-of" video and more after the jump.

The official tech-blurb from the creators of the video reads: "No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes." There's more in the "Making-Of" video.


I really like the way that they experimented with different methods of distorting the data to get a more distressed look in the shots of Thom's face. At the video's Google Code site, you can manipulate 3 of the rendered images as the song plays. You can also download the data to make your own video, and Radiohead invites you to add your video to their Youtube Group. Check out this one below from Youtuber, PartiallyFrozen.