- Title: USA: Michael Jackson fans from around the world star in his latest music video
- Date: 15th June 2011
- Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (JUNE 13, 2011) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DENNIS LIU, MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR, SAYING: "Michael Jackson meant a lot to his fans, so I'm sure he would have appreciated this sort of support his fans kind of gave."
- Embargoed: 30th June 2011 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Usa, Usa
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVAK3A43L1F1I95F9BXTQP2VW26
- Story Text: Michael Jackson fans from around the world have teamed together to star in the late King of Pop's newest music video.
Diehards were given the opportunity to shoot, upload and submit their performance as consideration for the "Behind the Mask Project".
"I think what immediately sprung as an idea was to do a crowdsource sort of effort where users from around the world and fans can help be a part of this experience" said the director of the music video Dennis Liu.
"I probably could be a judge for America's got Michael Jackson talent at this point because of the thousands, upon thousands of submissions that were submitted for the project," added Liu.
Roughly 20,000 submissions were uploaded to the site by fans from the Sahara Desert to Venice Beach. Liu, who watched almost every submission, said the clips ranged from creative to poignant.
"We had a Japanese translator look at some of the title cards and we got submissions after the earthquake and you can see in the back like where it says, Michael Jackson love forever and help support Japan for the earthquake. So I think, that just goes to show how moving his music is to have that sort of submission," said Liu.
Although Liu had great footage to work with he wanted to make sure he stayed true to Jackson's creative spirit.
"It's challenging with a posthumous sort of video because as an artist myself, you want to respect an artist's version, said Liu.
Liu who never meet Jackson said he is a longtime fan and knows Jackson's work like the back of his hands. One of the ways he paid tribute to Jackson was by sneaking in references to his past music videos.
"There are references in this video to his previous videos if you're that diehard of a fan. "Billie Jean's" one of them, there are a lot of these split scenes and templates for each frame that we used. I'll let you look for some of the others," Liu told Reuters.
The video premiered on Michael Jackson's official Facebook page on June 14th. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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