Future Shock, "Late at Night"

January 16, 2004 1:27 AM

Just what you wanted, break dancing Japanese geezers
Still photos, live action and animation melted into a music video (streaming Quicktime) by Neo, a duo made up of Londoners Jake Knight and Ryoko Tanaka. More clips on their site. (via Jeansnow.net)
posted by planetkyoto (20 comments total)

[this is great!]
posted by quonsar at 2:19 AM on January 16, 2004

[ditto!]
posted by moonbird at 4:31 AM on January 16, 2004

Oddly disturbing
posted by KnitWit at 5:03 AM on January 16, 2004

Mmm, the suppressed homoerotic vibe of the middle-aged salaryman.

This is classic, and the more time you've spent in Tokyo, um, late at night, the better it gets.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:14 AM on January 16, 2004

Heh. That's quite a talented group!
posted by woil at 7:11 AM on January 16, 2004

Wow. I loved that. More like this please.
posted by dazed_one at 7:41 AM on January 16, 2004

I expected to dismiss that with a brief, callous, but shockingly witty remark with just a touch of condescension but damned if I didn't really really like that. Very cool.
posted by xmutex at 9:06 AM on January 16, 2004

Awesome, awesome stuff.

Anyone able to ferret out a direct link to the video? The Flash navigation makes it tricky.
posted by Aaorn at 9:33 AM on January 16, 2004

Aaorn: I was able to extract it from my cache, using Moz. It's about 14mb if that helps. And it's a mpeg. Just start renaming ~14mb files w/ a .MPEG extension and give it a whirl.
posted by xmutex at 9:34 AM on January 16, 2004

I can't wait to get home and show this to my roommates.
The part where the one guy is dancing and the other is sitting motionless until the first guy activates him is just pure brilliance.
posted by daHIFI at 9:38 AM on January 16, 2004

let's not forget this lovely piece of breakdancing (windows media):

http://www.henry.martinez.net/videos/1stplace.htm
posted by o2b at 10:03 AM on January 16, 2004

Sweet xmutex, thanks. (14,246KB, if anyone else is searching.)
posted by Aaorn at 10:04 AM on January 16, 2004

The dancing is awesome -- what I find even more cool, though, is the layering of the backdrops used to simulate depth and perspective. It looks like everything's done with blue-screen, then the backdrops are layered in -- that's why everything seems so mildly distorted during the whole video -- but it's on purpose! I love it. They refer to this on their 'WHO' page as "spatial-temporal visual tricks."

Also check out the reflection in the window/mirror when the guy is in the convenience mart. No camera in the reflection, but if you look closely, you'll see that the reflection isn't a reflection at all.

The "salaryman 6" short film from the same producers is supposed to be fantastic -- can't find it on the net though. I believe it's a somewhat more involved version of the "vibe - salaryman" (Japanese MTV) short.
posted by treebjen at 10:32 AM on January 16, 2004

direct link
posted by zsazsa at 10:51 AM on January 16, 2004

treebjen: Nurri sez "salaryman 6" IS even better, not to be missed.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:25 AM on January 16, 2004

That's called popping, not break dancing.
posted by Mach3avelli at 11:39 AM on January 16, 2004

This is great! It's almost comfortingly artificial... if it were any less distorted, I think the creepy-factor would tilt over into the uncanny valley. As it is, though, it's fascinating. And thanks for the direct link, zsazsa.
posted by vorfeed at 2:14 PM on January 16, 2004

Here's a direct link to download the video: http://www.eyecandy.plus.com/fshock.mpg. Enjoy!
posted by freakystyley at 12:08 PM on January 17, 2004

Oops, double post :).
posted by freakystyley at 12:09 PM on January 17, 2004

Marvellous. But nothing beats Dave Elsewhere (the final dancer, from 50secs onwards).
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:51 PM on January 17, 2004