Jay-Z’s "Hello Brooklyn"
Sometimes when I really like something straight away upon encountering it, all eloquence and diligently learned SAT vocab words suddenly seem far out of reach, and all I can think of are childish descriptors like “awesomeness.” I feel (hope) that if I thought about it longer, the analytical side of my brain would kick in and help me describe why I find something worthy of being called awesomeness, but for this Jay-Z video, I think awesomeness is just about right. So take my word for it and check out the awesomeness.
This video is not the official music video, but rather an independent “tribute” to Jay-Z, Brooklyn, and New York by Greg Solenstrom, which actually in a way makes it even cooler, knowing that this guy produced this video pretty much for fun (ok, and maybe self-promotion) without any direction from the Jay-Z team. Although I will say that before I knew it was independently done, and I thought it was Jay-Z’s idea, I was like, “Wow, Jay-Z is even cooler than I thought!” Alas.
Solenstrom uses the font Akzidenz Grotesk (the precursor to Helvetica), which, as the font on MTA subway map designed in the late 60′s (and still used today) by Massimo Vignelli, seems a perfect choice, along with tons of still images of Brooklyn treated with the Vanishing Point effect in Photoshop and After Effects to animate the video.
The above video is a non-traditional but fascinating “making of”– meaning it will not teach you how to create a video like this, but rather will boggle your mind and convince you that you could never learn how to do this. Still, despite the mind-boggling, it’s worth checking out for the appreciation of the video and this guy’s talent that it will give you. I really had no idea how much work it would take to create a video like this.
