Research into music video FX

When searching around for music video styles and graphics I wanted something that was original but also very stylish. At first I was thinking of a story based music video, following typical conventions but realised it was an overused format. Instead, I chose that an aesthetics driven video would be far cooler, and riveting for my target teen audience. The videos I found were on various forums documenting the 'best of 2009' in underground music videos. One of them stood out to me like none of the others:



The technique baffled me and bugged me throughout my music video production as I desperately wanted to use it throughout. Unfortunately I only worked it out too far down the line to add it to the video and while keeping it's visual consistency.

I slowly realised that every 'row' of pixels along the screen, was one frame behind the previous row. Meaning, that as the film plays with that effect applied, each row becomes more out-of-synch the further down the screen.

I experimented with this idea towards the end to see if i'd worked out how the effect worked. here's my result:



The effect I later found out was called "time-displacement" and can be done effectively to anything filmed in a still shot, making anything move (in time, throughout the frames) be warped - it's a great effect to demonstrate a time-warp moment. Here's another example:



The effect was initially pioneered by Steina and Woody Vasulka, two Icelandic video-artists.