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A Need for Interactive Music Videos
Metic Cakmak and Helmut Hlavacs
University of Vienna, Research Group Entertainment Computing, Vienna, Austria
metincakmak@gmail.com, helmut.hlavacs@univie.ac.at
1
Introduction
Music videos [9] have been companions to modern pop and rock songs for decades
now. However, all music videos share one common property: they are static. Once hav-
ing been filmed, they remain as they are, never again change, though in the past more
and more examples of interactive selection of content and perspectives have appeared
[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. New computing technologies on the other hand nowadays make possi-
ble real-time rendering of complex scenes with stunning, photo realistic quality. These
features have mainly been used in modern high-quality computer games. In our work
we transfer this technology to the realm of music videos. This makes it possible to pro-
duce dynamically produced music videos, having the capability to change, to adapt, to
be created newly again and again, each time they are watched. Consumers can even
interact with them just like they can interact with computer games.
2
Automated and Interactive Music Videos
The practical work of this study was the creation of a video clip for a rap song using
the engine Unity 3D. At first we have analyzed hundreds of video clips of rap songs,
and categorized their content. Then we analyzed the rap song at hand and planned the
scenes according to the song text. The scenes have been realized directly in a 3D en-
vironment which we created in Unity 3D.
The rapper “Massimo Schena” is a young Austrian musician. He writes usually
about actual and major issues facing teenagers in the community. The main topics are
drug abuse, unemployment of teenagers, the lack of chances offered to teenagers, the
lack of education and other teenager related issues.
At first we created a 3D character of Massimo using the Blender 3D character crea-
tion tool. Then the animations of moves which he likes to do during a performance
were created with the same tool. We have created the animations according to a video
clip capturing the moves. The rapper mostly prefers dance styles like break dancing,
freestyle, dougie, hip hop and jerk and the hand gestures included mainly def wave,
the slim shady chop, and the ninja star .
After the creation of the character and the animations, we selected an appropriate
song from the repertoire of Massimo called “Mehr Perspektiven”
1
, a song demanding
more chances and options for teenagers to live a fruitful life.
1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veyDvOcGUBM
