Monday, 2 December 2013
New Article: Top 50 Happy Moments from Pharrell Williams’s 24 Hours of Happiness
Pharrell Williams is “Happy” for 24 Hours.
Honestly, I wouldn’t even know who Pharrell Williams was if it weren’t for the fact that he kinda became the voice of Daft Punk in 2013; he does the lead vocals on both “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance.” But he’s a musician and producer in his own right (just not in the styles of music to which I normally listen).
But Pharrell did something innovative and exciting and, well, pretty awexome. A week before Thanksgiving he released a video for his new single, “Happy” (for the soundtrack of Despicable Me 2). Thing is, this is a very unusual video: it lasts 24 full hours. For reals. Here’s how it works:
The song “Happy” is just a couple seconds short of 4 minutes long. The whole video consists of a series different “sections,” each of which lasts exactly 4 minutes, over which the song is played. So there are 360 sections total. Most of the sections consist of someone dancing towards a camera that is slowly backing away from them. There are of course variations in number of people and movement of camera (and there are several sections that are all about motor vehicles). Each section usually features a different person than the previous section. Each section is done in one continuous, unbroken take. For the most part each section is linked geographically to the previous section, meaning that it takes up in the same location where the previous section ended. Over the course of the 24 hours of the video, about an 8-mile stretch of Los Angeles is shown. Periodically the video will enter a specific location and linger there for several sections (like a supermarket and a bowling alley, for example).
Also, Pharrell Williams himself shows up in the first section of each hour, so he appears 24 times total for 4 minutes each.
And, yes, I watched all 360 sections of the video. Full disclosure: I didn’t always watch all 4 minutes of each section. If it failed to catch my interest I used the on-screen controls to just skip to the next section. But I have chosen my “Top 50 Sections” of this 24-hour video, and I present them here for you in chronological order. Click on any of the screenshots below to be taken directly to that section. At the bottom of this article I’ll have some more thoughts for you.
Categories: Featured Posts, Music, Videos.
