Club Candy TV Review in Pro Mobile Magazine

This was a review of Club Candy TV written by Pro Mobile magazine.

Pro Mobile Magazine - Issue 40, Page 69.
Club Candy TV is produced by Phil Bearman; you may remember his name as some of his previous visuals
were reviewed back in issue 20 of Pro Mobile. The DVD features six professional dancers in six different scenes: Boogie Nights, Electro Grunge, Glam, Neon Nights, Superclub and Vectro Electro, each designed to complement a different musical genre. There is an extensive mix of backgrounds in each of the six scenes, including a wide range of disco light type effects, a city background, a nightclub, various cocktail glasses, and some giant shoes!

Each scene features four minutes of footage making the DVD 24 minutes long in total. The DVD was designed to be used by VJs to provide visuals for tunes for which they don'thave an accompanying music video. All the visuals are choreographed to a constant tempo of 125 BPM with a click-track allowing the visuals to be synchronised with music using a DVD player with speed control. The DVD also features MPEG2 and MPEG4 H.264 files on the same disc for those using VJ software. This DVD is definitely intended to be used in segments - although it will play all the way through, it is best suited for use in the place of a music video, rather than as continuous background visuals.

Used in the right context, both DVDs would be an asset to a mobile DJ's show. All the dancing and graphics they feature are very good and professionally produced. Although some people feel that visuals of this kind can detract from the music, I personally feel that if left looping all night they have the same kind of effect as 'Go-Go Dancers' had in yesteryear.

As mentioned before, to be able to synchronize the timing of the DVDs with the BPM of the music track you have playing you will either need a DVD player with pitch control, or VJ software that will enable manipulation of the video. Of course if you're a budding VJ, if you don't have one or the other of these already, they'll probably be high up on your gear shopping list. All in all these DVDs are a worthwhile investment, and although they are similar on the surface, subtle differences enable them to serve different
purposes within a mobile DJ's show.

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You can view samples and buy Club Candy TV at www.ClubCandyTV.com

"The music goes really well"

I've lost count of the number of times that clients say to me "The music goes really well!" when I present them with an animation which has been choreographed to music.

What they perhaps don't realise is that actually it's the graphics that are going well with the music (not the other way around), and that is because I've painstakingly spotted all the 'cues' within the music (beats, bars and musical nuances) and made sure the motion coincides with those musical events. Not quite the happy coincidence it's often perceived to be!

This is why it's key to choose (and settle on) a piece of music before starting work on a project - it really does influence everything else in the process, and changing it further down the line will add a lot of time and therefore cost to the project.