By Ali Ikram
It's getting increasingly harder to impress the punters with music videos these days, so Neil Finn, never one to rest on his laurels, has become a guinea pig of sorts for the latest project by director Sam Peacocke.
The interactive videos give fans a chance to take control of Finn and his band, Pajama Club, and can be found on the Pajama Club website.
A few months ago the Pajama Club exchanged their PJs for motion capture suits to go where no band has gone before.
"It was actually pretty funny most of the day we looked like teletubbies,” Finn says.
“The photos were banned.”
Over 24 hours the bands heads, arms and legs were filmed individually to create two 3D videos. Now fans get to listen to the songs while playing Dr Frankenstein.
"You can swap our limbs you can put me on top of Sharon, Sharon on top of me, Shaun on top of either one of us,” Finn says.
He suggests playing around with the drummer’s head.
"He looks better than any of us he's younger and leaner so it might be fun to put my head on his body so I actually look like a 22 year old man again."
The reason for the lo-fi look is it was shot on an Xbox Kinect motion sensor, normally used for playing games. Jeff Nusz modified it to become a camera.
While still at it's experimental stage, 3D image capture is being compared to the dawn of colour TV.
“It's quite tech heavy at the moment but as the tools get better you'll see more and more interesting things happening," Nusz says.
The project is the brainchild of director Peacocke.
"Just doing a music video isn't good enough anymore," he says.
"If you come down to the cold hard facts, the longer someone spends mucking round in Pajama Club land, the better job it does as a music video."
The master songwriter is happy to play guinea pig and happy with the ethereal look of the finished product.
"It's like the recesses of the brain as the static builds up at 3 am,” Finn says. “The song’s about that as well which is good."
And if it's good enough for Neil Finn it's good enough for me.
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