BL:ND: Crazy

If you lurk around the same places I lurk around, you’ve probably already seen Blind’s incredible video for Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy."

crazy.jpg

With a concept as strong as its execution, "Crazy" cleverly uses Rorschach ink blots to house live action imagery of the two-man Gnarls Barkley team. Pay special attention to things around 1'06", when there’s a really nice sequence involving centipedes, a schizoid conversation and, ultimately, Satan.

Rad.

The subtle use of color also adds a nice atmospheric touch and breaks up the monochrome palette a bit. I also really like how the piece starts out fairly static and then incorporates more and more moving elements and chaotic energy as the song builds.

Man, I bet planning and shooting this thing was a bitch…

Visit Blind’s site | Direct link to "Crazy"

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

20 Comments

jan

I don’t think the concept is “strong”.
Anyway another MV with rorschach stuff: Frontier Psychiatrist

justin

“I don’t think the concept is ‘strong’.”

You know, that comment probably wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t true. :-)

Seriously, posting on Motionographer is making me more and more careful (sometimes to the point of paranoia) about my diction. You guys really keep me on my toes.

All this is a long way of saying I agree: “Strong” is, as you say, probably not the right word for describing the concept. “Clever” or “fun” might have been more appropriate.

Greg

actually… i’d agree with Justin..

the concept is “Strong”

a song talking about being crazy.. and using inkblots to showcast the talent.. i think that’s pretty strong.. ehh.. maybe i’m the one who’s crazy..

btw.. anyone see the penises? in the part where there’s cockroaches?.. definitely used some phalic imagery in there..

Onur Aksoy

yes…..penises….. and cockroaches….. I guess the Rorschach does work in this video too! :P

‘a song talking about being crazy.. and using inkblots to showcast the talent’
Yeah good point Greg.

I really love this – it’s so continous and every object blends in smoothly.

The colours remain the same throught the whole video though, a variation would have been good.

John

Justin says, “With a concept as strong as its execution”

Very well said, maybe even understated.

This is an amazing project with incredible vision. I’ve always thought BLind was underrated, which is probably a good thing because they avoid the pitfall of being cool today and gone tomorrow type of thing.

pj

meh… trite but really well done.

p

sonnyslade

well done.

jo3

everything about this is strong, more than strong.

cee-lo singing, danger mouse bobbing his head and in the mouse suit, perfect. the man who sings doing what he does, and the master mind behind the music existing to reinforce the music.

probably the best music video i have ever seen. i wish they, not blind in particular, would do a video for ‘just a thought’ by gnarls.

bravo, gold-star, spectacular.

Doug

I think this video would be stronger if it explored more of a narrative after the first 20seconds of seeing this symmetrical inkblot effect. It was technically executed well, but I was really tired halfway through. The concept successfully communicates the message, but I would disagree that it is as clever as some are making it out to be.

dee

i think bl:ind did a great job. you can definatly tell it’s their work. although something about the ink blots thing was sort of…well i dont know, boring. I wonder why they decided to use it throught the whole thing? I heard the song before I saw the video and I guess I had this picture of what it was going to be like; as the song is so descriptive and can be translated and taken in so many different directions. I like the video, it IS neat, however i think they could have mixed it up a little, and added some more dimensions. It seems like a rough draft or something, or a small part of a larger project, I dunno…

signal

I know that this video had a huge budget too.

Kray-Z

Justin, why do you think that this music video must have been a bitch to plan out the shoot? To me this seems like something that would be really easy to shoot but a bitch to animate.

justin

Planning the transitions and making the necessary boards to ensure that you aren’t wasting time animating something this intricate sounds like a bitch to me. And getting the talent to stay perfectly still while they singing soulfully is also a full of bitchness, I would think.

Having said that, I’d also say the animation would be a bitch, too. The whole thing, in short, was a bitch.

chief

was blind in charge of animating only? i’ve read a couple of places that robert hales directed this vid and it’s up under his name at the hsi site.

https://www.hsilondon.co.uk/Director.aspx?id=23

it’s odd that neither mentions the other on their respective portofolios. where’s the love?

SN

How do you think this video was produced?

Surely the ink blots werent produced by hand, the transitions between them would be as painstaking to animate as makng them digitally.

perhaps they used after effects and PS?

Charlie

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pixelwizard

I don’t know why you think this video had a huge budget. I personally worked on this video and it did not have a “huge” budget but a hell of a lot of work went into it.

As for Robert Hales, Robert was the Director of the video and conceptually came up with the idea regarding ink blots. However, Blind, and specifically one art director in particular was responisble for bringing that concept to life with the help of various other artists including myself. While the talent was shot on green screen using HDV the ink blots were shot using the same HDV and then animated and such using a variety of platforms including After Effects.

It was not easy and indeed took a lot of time on a compressed schedule no less.

I’m very happy to have been a part of the creation of what ultimately became an iconic piece of artwork in the media world.

Comments are closed.