ARASHI: Troublemaker

Below is a music video of the song "Troublemaker" by ARASHI.

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/XQ3OvJEctsw/

This song is the third best selling single of 2010 in Japan. It was released on March 3rd, 2010 by the record label JStorm. I really like this music video not only because it has a catchy chorus, but also because of the video itself. It incorporated stop motion as the main selling point, which gives the viewers a fresh experience  in music videos.
In this video, the song and visual images come together perfectly as they both follow a cheerful theme. The stop motion was done quite well, and I can tell that a lot of time and effort was put into this video. Furthermore, the rhythm of the stop motion also corresponds with the beat of the song. For example, between 00:09 to 00:26, the orange juice, apple and lettus all change in sizes according to the beat of the intro. For the juice, pictures were taken of the glass with different amount of juice. The editors then put the pictures together using the stop motion technique, creating an image of a glass of orange juice acting like volume levels of a stereo.
Although stop motion is the focal point of this music video, de-familiarization is another interesting point here. Using de-familiarization, inanimate objects are able to come to life. For example, a town built with toys in 1:47 to 1: 49 is put together as if the toy cars and people are actually moving.
I have also watched the 'making of' of this music video. The pictures of this video were taken in front of a green screen, which allowed the editors to add other features to the music video easily. Since this is a music video, the director of this video also thought about incorporating stop motion with the lyrics of the song. The Japanese language mostly consists of the sounds: A E I O U. The director took pictures of ARASHI as they mouthed the sounds of those five sounds. When the pictures are put together in stop motion, you can see that shape of their lips actually match the sound of the song. (See 2:25 to 2:27)

I like how this music video has a different approach than typical music videos. They way their incorporated stop motion and de-familiarization allows viewers to depict everything in a different point of view, which is a very good selling point.

Source: http://www.j-storm.co.jp/arashi/disco/single/s_23.html