PSYOP: Converse Music Video by Kid Cudi, Best Coast, & Rostam Batmanglij

Posted by Matt Lambert


PSYOP: Converse Music Video by Kid Cudi, Best Coast, & Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend)

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Matt Lambert

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24 Comments

jayrsotelo

hopefully this guy was rewarded

http://testroete.com/

monovich

ditto. beyond the lowpoly paper faces the video was a bunch of people dancing around in a room with some grunge laid on top.
The interwebs are to small to use Testroete’s idea and not put him way up the credits list (unless you want to pull a repeat of the Sony bunnies thing).

JasonC

Literally the first thing I thought when I saw this video

kult

Wow, yet sadly, I’m actually surprised it took this long.

col

Wow this is really bad.

Surprised to see Psyop behind this and it being featured all over the blogs.

Apart from the agency ripping someone’s idea the direction, editing and just everything about it is crappy.

There they got it served on a silver platter and can’t even rip it off nicely.

see more

rip off is right. psyop should be ashamed who can live with themselves. first shynola now this?

i think its time they shut it down. the last few years of projects were such poop. smuggler really ruined them.

sorry to say but put a fork in um.. DONE.

schwarzgrau

My first thought “hey there was this guy, who did this papercraft 3d head, wait I got it in my favs” second thought “what a lame video except of the big head idea” third thought “psyop?”

najork

Not even the first to try this in a music video.

col

Out of curiosity I emailed Eric to ask if he was approached by Psyop or the Agency or involved at all and he replied: “I did see it, and I wasn’t involved :(”

Psyop and Agony have just lost all my respect. If you aren’t really creative & original at least have some dignity to ask the original creator for permission, involvement or reimbursement.

It’s really a shame these two wellknown parties operate like this.

col

Sorry, agency is Anomaly not Agony

Brian Gossett

To be fair, I believe Bert Simons was the first to do this as far as I can recall back in 2006 or so.

http://www.bertsimons.nl/zenphoto/paperworks/

Ryan Rothermel

1999 – Gwon Osang… http://osang.net/works/deo.html

My feelings on this, is that where these guys are in a fine art world, psyop just put that content into motion. We obviously live in a world of ffffffffound, and thats fine… we’re all looking at the same shit everyday, so it’s hard to not want to make something move that sits still as a photograph. If these artists made a video that psyop intentionally ripped off frame by frame, thats another story. but in reality this is just another technique, as is dropping ink in water, or shooting people in stop motion.

artesanNY

woah this is by far the worst looking spot done by psyop ever.. i wonder what happened? i used to be a fan of psyop, not anymore… after this i hope they still in business. anyways please go easy on the director if any.. from what we see here it maybe his first try? cheers
TheArtesan Rodriguez.

col

Credits

Converse – All Summer
Artists: Kid Cudi, Best Coast and Rostam of Vampire Weekend 

Agency: Anomaly, New York
Creative Director/Partner: Mike Byrne
Creative Director: Ian Toombs
Art Director:  Grant Mason
Executive Producer: Andrew Loevenguth

http://www.glossyinc.com/converse2010.html
Directed and Animated by Psyop
Directors: Marco Spier, Marie Hyon
Art Director: Gerald Ding
Editor: Cass Vanini
Compositors: Fred Kim & Borja Peña
Executive Producer: Lucia Grillo
Associate Producers: Adam Coffia & Danielle Birch

adrian

I wonder was this Psyop LA and not NY? I noticed the LA projects seemed to be really sub-standard for what you would typically expect from Psyop. I remember a Heineken spot about a year ago that made me think Psyop? WTF? Then I noticed it was an LA office of Psyop.

Roger

If a small or a not so well “respected” studio did the same thing, will they be also “excused”?

Brian Gossett

Paul Rand referenced and was inspired by his favorite artists of his time in his commercial and graphic work. Should we bash him too?

Roger

None of Paul Rand’s graphic work is in any way similar to Studio Dumbar or Herb Lubalin works. One thing is referencing and other thing is stealing some other artists work.

Brian Gossett

Those were his professional contemporaries within his field. What I said was that he was inspired by FINE artists and modern designers of his time such as El Lissitzky, Moholo-Nagy, the Bau Haus and the Dadaist movement. Their inspiration is nearly obvious in all of his earlier advertising work while at Weintraub & Co. and that is what set him apart from the rest of the designers of his time in the US. I am not saying Rand ripped anyone off, I am just using him as an example that we are all inspired by something. Sure his work may not be similar to those you listed but they were similar to other artists/designers. Rand was different in the way he handled business and that’s what made him so great.

dutch

col asked me to comment here.

I’m Eric Testroete who did halloween big head thing.

http://testroete.com/index.php?location=head

I’m not crazy about converse/anomally/psyop doing this without giving myself or Bert a nod.

I’m all for sharing of ideas, but at least give some credit.

On a side note, perfectfools, contacted me about consulting on a very similar project involving converse and 3 artists. Unfortunately that never worked out.

I suspect this whole thing was Converse’s idea originally.

-Eric

col

Thanks for speaking out, Eric. It’s good to have these discussions and expose wrong doings. It’s a shame because artists should be making the money instead when they invest their precious time and passion in their ideas.

Not that Psyop cares, if they did they’d have contacted you but they’re not cool like perfecttools. They try to ride on your success but fortunately their arrogance made them fall big time.

Fuck them both, Psyop and Anomaly. Truth’s gonna prevail in history, always.

Besides Lindsay Lohan just got into jail. Lot more important.

vvkonline

i lean towards that this is a technique and probably getting very popular now.
also saw it on this music artists website
http://www.myspace.com/panceparty

dutch

To be fair, those guys did contact me but I wasn’t interested in helping them out.

Quite a few people have contacted me about this, but I only ended up chasing the ones most interesting to me, none of which have worked out! :)

Looks like I’ve fallen behind the curve.

JasonC

Yeah, not too surprising I suppose, since there’s no intellectual property on the technique in particular, why WOULDN’T someone trying to make a profitable product not involve Eric if they didn’t have to, that said, credit wouldn’t go unappreciated.

Ah well, at least take pride in that because you detailed your methods on how to make the big heads so well that there will be worthwhile art to come from it.

Anyone remember that neat PSYOP ad for MHD they did a while back?
Here it is along with a whole bunch of other awesome visual effects videos:
http://www.frequency.com/video/crow/4355

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