One of the best music videos of 2013 belongs to a 48-year-old song. The interactive video for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," released yesterday, is a tour de force: as the music plays, you can flip between sixteen channels of simulated TV programming. But whether you're watching a financial news update, a romantic comedy, or a tennis tournament, it looks authentic except that everyone seems to be lip-synching the lyrics of the song. While many of the channels are peopled by actors, the lineup is peppered with numerous celebrity performers such as comedian Marc Maron, rapper Danny Brown, the hosts of Pawn Stars, and Drew Carey (on the set of The Price Is Right). The overall effect is head-spinning but incredibly compelling: the more you surf through the "Like a Rolling Stone" video, the more the song's contempt seems to be addressed to all of western civilization. By the time you land on a vintage live performance of the actual Bob Dylan, he feels like the only real person in existence.
"The effect can only be surrealistic if the channels are realistic," says Vania Heymann, the video's 27-year-old Israeli director. "In reality, channel-flipping is a very passive act. You're sitting back in your house, doing nothing. We wanted to make it an active thing, reediting the song itself to make a new version."
The video took about two continued
Let me just say, watching it on "The Price is Right" channel is spooky; chilling. Brilliant and prophetic (see:
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