Picture: Vimeo/Rotor screenshot
At some point, all organizations want a video clip. And with the large number of cameras and reasonable software, the equipment to do so is easily accessible. But you want skills, talent, artistic vision and anything else that’s reasonable. Don’t worry, because a new video start-up called Rotor aims to oppose this model.
Think of it as plug-and-play video clips: users upload a song to the website, upload 4 video clips, and then Rotor’s video clip creation tool takes care of the rest of the work.
The site was designed through a team of music video directors, visual artists and artistic programming experts: Diarmuid Moloney, Eoghan Kidney and Tim Redfern. I tried the new tool, which is being positioned for its beta version, and talked to Kidney about creating the idea, software and Rotor generation and the team’s long-term projects for the site.
Base plate: Where did the concept come from?
Rein: Our CEO, Diarmuid Maloney, adopted the original concept and developed it with the Propel program at Derry. I joined aboard basically because, as music video director, I knew tons of musicians who can’t or can’t make videos; and they’re still very important, more so now.
What is modus operandi?
It was vital for us not only to create a formula with some generic styles. We know musicians wouldn’t be interested in that. We want to give visual artists the team to create their own video styles, so we’ve developed a way to do it. We’re excited to see this in the wild and see if other people settle for that, like a WordPress for music videos with visual artists who win every time one of their styles is used.
How flexible is that? Is there an intensity in what Rotor can drive?
It’s as flexible as a user wants. A musician can download a song, decide a liking and press “go” if they want, but a stylist can create likes from scratch on Patchbay. They can be customizable, with a user contributing to video clips, dictating the beat or otherwise. We’re working on tactics for an artist to film, download and collect functionality in an engaging way, as well as other really attractive features that we’ll release in the third quarter. We have tons of concepts and so little time!
Do you have a goal in mind?
All musicians who need other tactics to make their music heard.
Is the video synchronized to the rhythm of the music?
Yes. Rotor analyzes downloaded music, locating data such as the location of beats, similarity-based segmentation (i.e., where the chorus and verses are located), the degrees of intensity of the segment, etc. It is this data that is used to compose the style video.
How did you design your aesthetic and stylistic parameters?
In our Patchbay Web flavor creation tool. We welcome many artists from other backgrounds, introducing them to Patchbay and letting them pass and creating tastes that they can then sell to musicians.
What videos have surprised you so far?
We were running with music managers Sasha Rainbow and Stephen Agnew and they got interested and started getting wonderful effects from them. We will like to guide through them in a position for launch. Therefore, it depends on who uses it and what you do with it. We’re still in development, so I’m sure a lot of surprises will come, and we’re eager to see what other people do with it.
If users design music video likes, are they asked to share this taste with others on a network? **
They have to if they have to. We propose that you do so, as this may be a good opportunity to earn some pounds. We expect an incredibly equitable revenue-sharing model.
What software and generation is Rotor?
Our CTO expert, Tim Redfern, has coded a C rendering engine called RotorD that lives in the cloud. We use Ruby for the front end. We’ve created a patented JavaScript tool in a browser that directors can use to design a style. It is a node formula that we expect audiovisual designers to be familiar with, as are VJ teams like Isadora or post-production teams like Nuke.
Final mentality about the process?
Well, this is the first time one of us has tried something like this. We all come from environments very unrelated to the Web, so it was a real curve to be informed. I had to be informed to a certain extent to code and use things like Python. We are also looking for new partners who can help us locate our user base. So, if anyone’s interested in getting on board, touch us.