The band Father Tiger's latest release "Shell" features a catchy music video in which each of the frames was painstakingly processed through Instagram.
Fans contributed many of the Instagram photos used in the video, which after three months of editing became what could be the breakout hit for this synthpop duo from Los Angeles.
Greg Delson and John Russell met in 2005 at a Los Angeles audio engineering school, right around the time that social media was getting its start. The duo has mastered Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr to reach their fans. But for the first time, they used Instagram to let fans participate in the making of the band's music videos.
"Shell" is all about expressing yourself and Instagram seemed like a perfect match, video director and editor Jeffrey McHale said in Father Tiger's behind-the-scenes video about the making of "Shell."
"At the time, I was really getting into Instagram," McHale said. "It was interesting to see how people were expressing themselves on this social media."
McHale, Delson and Russell ran a contest on Instagram last spring, calling for fans who would like to contribute photos for the upcoming music video. Selected Instagram users received neon cutout art pieces that had to appear in their photos. Participants took 10 photos each and tagged them #ftshell. The only other rule is that users had to turn Instagram borders off. However, Instagram filters and collage apps like PicFrame were encouraged. Father Tiger received more than 400 submissions.
Along with quirky fan photos, the group shot video using an iPhone 4. The footage was edited in Final Cut Pro and then exported frame by frame back into the iPhone, where each one was processed individually in Instagram. Fan photos got the same treatment. Then McHale exported the images back into Final Cut for final editing.