Salted Stone's in-house video & animation team had never tackled a Virtual Reality project before being approached by the team at Atlantic Records. But, when asked to direct and produce Saint Motel's 360-degree VR music video for "Move", there was absolutely zero hesitation.
Inspired by a 'choose your own adventure' story, which happens to take place entirely at the disco of our dreams, the video was released in the summer of 2016. It received lots of love, and allowed our creatives to dip their toes into the world of music video magic.
Paste Magazine wrote:
"...it's an amazing interactive experience. Riding on the wave of the virtual reality trend, the danceable track “Move” actually allows you to move (see what we did there?) through the technicolor animations and follow along with the unfolding love story."
HOW IT CAME TO LIFE
The virtual world was built partially in Adobe After Effects and used a mix of frame-by-frame animation and procedural environment generation. It was important that our creative team use as much of the 360 space as possible to create the experience so that no matter where the viewer looks they can be fully immersed.
Viewers lose themselves spinning the vinyl, become mesmerized by sexy go-go dancers, clap along as Saint Motel performs on an old television set, and spin around under the disco ball. Or, they simply enjoy getting lost in the trippy 70's inspired visuals. The goal was to make the video as fun and interactive as possible.
Our team also paid close attention to directing both eye and head movement for those viewers who are experiencing the video with a headset so that we could simulate dancing.
