Video: Watch Mike Snow play ‘The Wave’ live from the crowd, the stage or the photo pit
Here’s something fairly innovative that we’d like to see more often: instead of simply filming a gig or performance from one viewpoint and slapping it on YouTube, how about filming it from several? Before, er, slapping it on YouTube.
In this interactive ad/video, the viewer is given the choice between watching electronic music supremo Mike Snow’s gig from one of three angles: the crowd, the stage or the photo pit. Clicking on your choice then takes you to YouTube where you can watch the video. Obviously, the crowd option presents you with the view that you’ll already be accustomed to, the camera aligned with the centre of the stage, residing at the back of the concert hall while capturing the action through a wide-angle lens.
The stage option will be familiar to those who have been invited (or drunkenly blagged their way) to the side of the stage during a gig in the past and, even though it’s dressed up as the ‘VIP’ option when you’re clicking on it, doesn’t really add anything to the viewing experience over the crowd option.
Where things get really interesting, though, is with the photo pit option, which presents a viewpoint that anybody who isn’t a photographer won’t be familiar with, and it does a great job of capturing the intimacy experienced through Mr Snow himself being almost within touching distance, tinkering on his synth and looking visibly sweaty. You feel like you could climb up onto the stage, pull down your pants and start yelling in French at any given moment — before being wrestled off stage by security and having your camera confiscated.
In fact, scrap the other two videos — we’d like to see more gigs at the O2 Academy shot from just the photo pit option. People don’t just want to simply see and hear their musical heroes these days — they want to be close enough to smell their armpits.
Unless it’s Tenacious D performing, that is. That may violate several health and safety laws. Might need to stick to the crowd view there.
