musicvideo

The 'lyric-lapse' isn't new. But creating one takes so much time and dedication that we still don't see them crop up very often.

There are many videos and articles out there condemning the use of Photoshop to alter a model's body in unnatural ways. The practice is abhorred by most, and hardly a week goes by that another "Photoshop fail" or controversy doesn't arise (this week's featured photos of actress Lena Dunham taken by iconic portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz).

The most recent anti-Photoshop video making the rounds online, however, is a bit different. It's a music video that shows the lead singer being given a digital makeover as she sings the song.

If we start a post off by telling you that "the stop motion video above consists of 8,000 frames taken on an iPhone," you'd probably assume it was some small-time filmmaker or hobbyist that put it together, and most of the time you'd be right.

In this case, however, you'd be dead wrong. Because that's exactly how musicians LeAnn Rimes, Rob Thomas, and Jeff Beck decided to film the music video for their most recent collaboration, a song called "Gasoline and Matches."

It's getting harder to impress these days when it comes to music videos, because there seems to be an abundance of uber-creative people putting together really interesting takes. A great example is this simple yet moving music video filmed entirely in the reflection of an eyeball.

The band The Paper Kites went a bit more complicated when putting together the music video for their song "Young," but the results are no less captivating.

Yesterday we shared an amazing time-lapse music video spanning 24-hours on a Parisian rooftop.  While the video did, in fact, make my jaw "drop" (there's a pun coming), it got me thinking about one of the most amazing music videos I've ever seen: "Drop" by The Pharcyde.

Every once in a while someone gets really, really creative and it makes our jaws drop. Such is the case with UK pop artist Dan Black's timelapse music video for his song called "Hearts."

In short, the video (created by the folks at Chic & Artistic) features Black and company on a Parisian rooftop -- for a full 24 hours. That's right, one full day of shooting (from 11AM to 11AM!).

Here's a really creative idea that makes for a really cool and unique music video. For the second single off of his upcoming album Where You Stand, musician Travis teamed up with a creative directing duo to put together a music video shot entirely using an animation projected onto the band's breath in freezing temperatures.

We've seen some pretty creative music videos in the past, ranging from a microscopic time-lapse to what looked to be a Google Street View music video. The latest creative musical endeavor that has caught our eye is a video by the California group The Grouch & Eligh (or G&E for short).

Working together with Colorado-based DJ Pretty Lights, they put together a video that combines traditional time-lapse and hyper lapse with stop motion for a mind-bending 'lyric lapse' experience similar to what we saw in Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams' Dream Music video.

It took 223 takes, 8 hard-boiled eggs, 5 microphones, 2 days and 1 camera, but Bob Boilen's Tiny Desk -- which is featured in the Boilen-created Tiny Desk Concert series on NPR Music -- has officially been moved to NPR's new headquarters.

Why did it take so much video? Because Boilen decided to film a Tiny Desk Concert featuring the band OK Go during the move, producing the above music/moving video in the process.

We've featured quite a few "bullet time" projects in the past that involve freezing time using rigs of tens or hundreds of cameras, but have you ever seen the technique done with pinhole cameras? That's what you'll see in the music video shown above. It's for the song "Wasting My Young Years" by London Grammar.

It's always a good idea to get to know your neighbors. Case in point: photographer David Vincent Wolf recently found himself directing a mind-bending music video for the band Portugal. The Man, and all because his neighbor Rich Holtzman happens to be both the manager of the band and the father of his daughter's preschool classmate.

Last Saturday, we featured a creative music video by the band James Wallace and the Naked Light that was shot entirely in one take in the reflection of a fan's eyeball. It was a wonderfully simple video and an approach we hadn't seen before in a music video.

But shortly after featuring that video, we were told that a similar idea had actually been done before by the Italian band K-Conjog, when they made the award-winning video for their song Qwerty.

Check out this creative and moving music video that was shot entirely through the reflection of an eyeball. The band is James Wallace and the Naked Light, the song is "To the River," and the video is a beautiful example of simplicity and creativity working hand in hand.

Directors Ian & Cooper created this clever music video for the song “Back …

Check out this one-of-a-kind music video for the song "Could Be Me" by the band Gunnar and The Grizzly Boys. The video is titled "Redneck Country Band Ambushes Google Street View Car!," and appears to be a music video shot entirely through the cameras of Google's Street View cars.

Photographer and director Greg Jardin made this creative music video for the song "New York City" by Joey Ramone. It's a stop-motion video that features 115 people (some of them random pedestrians yanked off the street) traveling backwards through various locations in New York City.

NYC-based creative agency OKFocus has created a brilliant interactive music video for the song "Not The Same" by Tanlines. The experimental video is styled after Photoshop's workspace.

You might remember PermaGrin Films' Marc Donahue from his amazing "Dream Music: Part 2" lyric-lapse video that took 6 hours of work for every 3 seconds of footage. We even shared a behind the scenes look at how that time-lapse was put together, complete with deleted scenes and director commentary.

We all know Instagram as an app for retro-filtered photos, but have you ever considered using it to film a video, one photo at a time? That's what director Arturo Perez Jr. did for the video above. It's the official music video for the song "Invasión" by Mexico City-based band The Plastics Revolution.

Back in August we shared a mesmerizing stop-motion video titled "Dream Music: Part 2" and created by Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams. The team spent 6-8 hours of work photographing every 3-4 seconds of the 8-minute music video. All in all, the project took six months to complete. The video above presents a behind-the-scenes look at how the whole thing was done, with director's commentary, deleted scenes, and a bunch of time-lapses of the time-lapse being shot.

Photographer Michel “Mijonju” Jones just sent us this humorous parody music video that …

Last year, we shared an interesting video showing a blank white room that could be completely transformed in an …

Linkin Park has released a new music video that makes creative use of online photos. Visit the website for the song "Lost in the Echo", and you'll be asked to connect with the music video using your Facebook account. Once you provide it with access, it crunches some data, and then starts playing. The video starts out like many other videos, showing a group of people in what appears to be some kind of post-apocalyptic hideout. Then one of the characters pulls out a suitcase with photos, and something catches you eye: personal photos from your Facebook albums are shown inside the video!

Dream Music: Part 2 is an amazing stop-motion and time-lapse video by Marc Donahue and Sean Michael Williams that features a technique they call "lyric-lapsing". Using still photos, they somehow planned the time-lapse sequences just right, so that the singer in the video is actually mouthing the words as he scurries around to various locations. They state that the video is a "musical voyage into the depths of the subconscious", and that it was designed to "transport the viewer from their own reality into a world of dreams and at the end, [...] awake to wonder how we were able to take them there."

The magnitude of the effort is what's truly impressive. The creators spent six months shooting the photos across two states. Every 3-4 seconds seen in the video required about 6-8 hours of work to create.

Director Kevin Parry recently finished creating a music video for the song "Water Falls" by Kalle Mattson. Filmed by Andrea Nesbitt, the video features some crazy time-lapse shots over great distances in San Francisco. Parry has also turned the shots into these animated GIFs that show you what various locations would look like if you were Superman whizzing around.

Alex Dainis of Boston first recorded herself lip-syncing the song “Aaron’s Party” by Aaron Carter back when she was …

Orrin Hastings spent three months creating this stop-motion music video for the song …

Feast your eyes on this amazing stop motion music video idea for the song “Rivers and Homes” by electronic …

This music video for the song “Solidified” by Gramatik features an interesting technique: …

To celebrate the end of the school year, the photojournalism students at Western Kentucky University created this music video …