The Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham is currently undergoing a massive refurb and is due to reopen in 2010. This week Jon Bounds noticed a flythough video of the new layout was released, which was terribly exciting. Unfortunately, while technically lovely and with some nice injokes (New toilets! Comfortable seats!) the music is quite excruciating, especially for a centre that is supposed to be all about creativity and excellence in the arts and all that. Check it out:
Since I have complete confidence that the new MAC will be superb I feel its flythough deserves better. The video isn’t downloadable so I used the screen-capture application iShowU to record it (in principle the same as videoing off the telly), wiped out the offensive audio and tried some new soundtracks.
First off, the base standard for corporate video hijinks, Popcorn:
That’s all lovely, but how about something with more of a Birmingham connection. Black Sabbath’s The Wizard perhaps?
I think the MAC deserves something a little more bombastic though. Like, maybe, The Flaming Lips’ Race For The Prize. The perfect way to greet a new day.
Now let’s take things down a bit with a bit of Mogwai, specifically Auto Rock from the Mr Beast album.
Yes I’m infringing the shit out of the copyrights here but, meh, who cares. If the vids get taken down then it’s no biggie. The point of this exercise (and yes, there’s a point) is that it’s dead easy for someone with a computer to do this. The company that made the flythrough are professionals and paying them to do this is, I feel, I good thing. I now have a much better idea of what my local arts centre is going to look like. But while they might be shit hot at flythroughs they really shouldn’t be allowed to chose the music.
So why not turn this into a game? Release the raw footage and get the public involved in making the video better? I’ve just slapped 4 minute songs on there but that’s because I’m lazy. The scope for creativity here is pretty endless. Tell people to upload their vids to YouTube tagged with “macflythrough” and the best ones that don’t infringe any copyrights will be featured on the MAC website. Sure, this means losing control of the branding a bit but, hell, like that matters. The centre belongs to the people after all.
So if you want to play, here’s a copy of the flythrough with no audio (mpeg 55mb). You can definitely edit this in iMovie and I’d imagine Windows Movie Makers or whatever should be able to cope with it. Go crazy.
And if you’ve had fun with all this, do consider giving a bit of cash to the Support MAC fund.
Yes, I know it’s supposed to be mac and not MAC but I’ve never liked the lower-case thing…
Update
Here’s another one. Michael Nyman turns the MAC into a Peter Greenaway movie:
One from @bounder:
Matt Murtagh noticed the ghosts…