Free Idea: Four-Sided Music Video

I love music videos. For a short, misguided time earlier in my life I wanted to be a music video director, no doubt influenced by the Directors Label DVDs. What appealed to me, I suppose, were the inherent constraints of music videos. The best videos tend to encapsulate a single idea. Songs are typically 3-4 minutes in length, enough time to execute a concept but not too long to bore the audience with it (ideally). The thought of making a full length film seemed like an impossibly complex task, but music videos, I could understand. 

The role of music videos in today’s media landscape seems unclear. Aside from some notable examples pushing the boundaries (eg. OK Go and Arcade Fire), most people seem disinterested and consider music videos a relic of a bygone era. 

I had a realization the other day. The iPad is the first video consumption device that allows for easy orientation switches. It’s actually designed that way, with an equal bezel around the edge of the screen and no discernible top or bottom (Home button notwithstanding). The same can’t be said for movie theaters, televisions, laptops, portable dvd players, etc., all designed to view content in one (immovable) orientation. 

I would be interested to see a director take advantage of this unique characteristic, and create a “tablet only” music video that utilizes all four orientations. The viewer would be free to rotate the device as they saw fit, and watch the video from several different perspectives, lending a bit of interactivity to the experience. I am envisioning a single-shot video in an enclosed space, where the floor, ceiling, and side walls map to each edge of the tablet, and action takes place along each edge. Think Virtual Insanity mixed with Inception. Of course, that’s just one idea, but this concept could obviously be applied to any number of ideas. The “free-rotation” concept isn’t limited to music videos either, but I feel anything longer than a song’s length would tire the user, and the gimmick would wear off. 

Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze, if you’re reading, I fully expect you to jump on this.