Exyzt installation Ripped off by “the Killers”
EXYZT CUBE INSTALLATION:
At the end of last year, I’ve been blown away when I discovered Etienne de Crecy live installation at Transmusicales festival (Rennes / France), not that I’m particularly a huge fan of de Crecy’s music, but I found the “stage design” very impressive and unique.
The show is an hour of visual mapping and projections on a big cube, while de Crecy is playing live electronic music, and triggering the lights and visual sequences, standing in the middle cube, inside the installation.
The setup is very effective, they used semi-transparent material to give more depth to the projections, and all the content is perfectly mapped to the structure, and produced with a very specific technique, to give the impression that the cubes are actually in 3D, and to create depth and volume.
In fact there is only one projector, and all the magic comes from the clever setup and the quality of production.
I found out a couple of weeks later that the brilliant Parisian crew Exyzt produced this installation (they are a team of architects, designers, geniuses technicians etc..) and after seeing their work a couple of times (at mapping festival), I wasn’t so surprised, and I couldn’t see anyone else doing such a great project.
THE KILLERS RIP OFF:
Waw, that was quite shocking !!!
A few days ago, I discovered a video of the american band “the killers” performing at the MTV EMA.
Same installation (with a few more cubes), same lighting effects, same content: rotating cubes mapped on the structure, with all the exyzt effects: same movements, rotations, even the same 4 colors have been copied from de Crecy’s set performance.
The only differences are the TERRIBLE mapping (not a single line is aligned properly), and hearts, equalizers, and other badly designed 2D visuals added to exyzt’s original content. Of course the result probably impressed most of MTV’s audience, but compared to the original piece, there was something fundamentally wrong in the Killers show, and it couldn’t be exyzt work.
LEFT: Original mapping by Exyzt – RIGHT: mapping failure by the Killers (click to zoom in)
This video might be offline soon, as Viacom (the owner of MTV) is trying to make this clip disappear from youtube (many copies have been removed already).
THE STORY:
It’s not that often when mapping installations are brought to mainstream audiences and TV shows, so I wanted to know more about this, so I contacted Franz from Exyzt, and Lauren (PR for the Killers) to get their inputs on this.
Franz confirmed that the MTV show wasn’t done by Exyzt, and in fact the MTV staff contacted them after seeing de Crecy’s installation to get a copy of it for “the killers” show. Of course this wasn’t possible, for obvious artistic and legal reasons, but the crew offered his services to create a new stage design for the American band.
MTV and the Killers probably didn’t want to be creative, and Exyzt never heard back from them, until they saw the Rip off of their work on TV.
Lauren never replied to my emails, so I don’t have the killers version of the story, but I guess they might be well ashamed now after doing such a bad thing.
We don’t know much yet about the company who accepted to reproduce the installation, but I doubt that this story will make them a good publicity either.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW ?
Lawyers are on the case to make the Killers pay for what they did, (remember kids, killers always get caught 
). It’s a real shame to see great ideas stolen by big companies, and this might happen more and more, so it would be good to get this case known as much as possible, so maybe big bands will think twice before copying visual artists’ work next time.
Please forward this link to press, magazines, myspaces, blogs:
http://blog.antivj.com/2008/exyzt-installation-ripped-off-by-the-killers
28 Responses to “Exyzt installation Ripped off by “the Killers””
November 19th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Too bad nobody knows who that other guy is, and the Killer’s show was infinitely more impressive. Everything lines up perfectly; you just took a screenshot of a low camera angle when there were boxes inside of boxes starting to twirl.
this article isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the supposed lawsuit lol…
November 19th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Yeah, it’s total ripoff, but its not the killers who ripped it off you idiot, it’s MTV’s show crew.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Just would like to add my two cents,
From a “normal viewer” perspective, the killers show was impressive, which is what prompted me to go searching for the design team to see any of their other work. Now that I have seen the Exyzt work, it is definately impressive, but in a way (and in my worthless opinion) they did the groundwork, and the killers show just went a different route with it. One of the main things I would say on the mapping side of it (and I know VERY little about it) is that the Etienne de Crecy installation used a projector as you said. The killers show used large LCD’s as the projectors wouldnt have been powerful enough in the environment. Perhaps this is possible cause for the poor alignment? Also, the style of the whole show was (searches for word…) … scribbley?? and I think suited the performance. There is no doubt it was a rip-off, but just considering the merits of the killers show (and it certainly is getting applauded by the audiences – look at the youtube comments!)
Interesting though =)
Niall
November 20th, 2008 at 8:46 am
SCANDALE !!!
November 20th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
[...] along! “One of these things is almost exactly like the others.” Comparison by Anti VJ. (Alternatively, "Somebody told me / you did a stage install / that looked like a stage [...]
November 21st, 2008 at 12:07 am
Heck, The Killers plagiarized themselves from the fake band in a New Order Video.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 am
1984:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrWe2UuVn-Q
I’m just saying.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
[...] MTV ripped off the idea recently, and did a much worse job, musically and visually. Read about it here. [...]
November 28th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
look that for a good view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzil8S7tUeY&eurl=http://www.20minutes.fr/article/276544/Culture-Le-cube-de-la-discorde-entre-Etienne-de-Crecy-et-MTV.php
December 1st, 2008 at 2:31 pm
To all the people who are trying to stand up for the Killers/MTV then think for a second. Here is a large corporation (MTV) and a globally successful band (The Killers) who have between them a large pot of money. Like a bully in the playground, they have come along and asked to use an effect that another group of artists have created.
Now I know that the artists have a legally binding contract that means they can’t sell that concept to others. So in good business sense they offered to do something equally cool and interesting as a special design for the Killers.
Well no! They creative geniuses who wear suits and sign legal papers that now make up these huge “creative” organisations thought let’s not be creative, let’s just take what is not ours and try and beat the legal rap because we’ve got bigger pockets.
Now these are the same people who will chase you down if you download an MP3 file of their album, even if you own the CD. I can tell that the projects were created by literally rotoscoping the effect from original footage and then reprojecting it. Even if it did fit the style of the evening it wasn’t planned like this and is a blatant rip which is why it didn’t line up. Basically it was done by a monkey who has about as much creativity as it takes to hold a pen and sign on the dotted line.
So ask yourselves this, should creativity be sold for the sake of honour. I think you should all look at yourselves in the mirror and ask yourself if you have been tied up in the global corporations world where the pot calls the kettle black and throws money at legal battles to win its profit margins.
I prefer to keep myself as a credible artist and work with creative individuals rather than steal from them. Innovation leads the way and always will, imitation just kills off anything and everything.
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
stolen music – stolen visuals – poor band!
December 4th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Thanks for this story AntiVJ! I also saw the Etienne de Crecy video on vimeo and was impressed and searching for the team who produced it. Then I saw Killers video after that and was almost sure that it was designed by the same team! Now everything is clear. Shame!!
December 4th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
[...] It turns out the Exyzt piece here got ripped off by none other than MTV and The Killers, get the full story HERE. [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
totally agree, is disappointing (but typical) the Killer’s/MTV ripped the idea off rather than collaborate or at least get permission (credit or pay homage to Exyzt)!?
…But I’ve got to say the design on the Killers set looks fantastic, i understand it doesn’t line up as well as the original but …it looks stunning!
The Killer set may also be touring so that might excuse the preciseness
December 16th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
It’s just a shame, but at the same time the harsh reality. I hope the paris crew is already busy building a new even more impressive installation and making this concept absolete. To me, this sort of shit is pure motivation to push it further. Big props to the exyzt crew.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:51 am
I guess the deal between mtv and exyzt went wrong, we don’t know why (exyzt asked a ridiculous fee? or agenda troubles?) …
I wander what copyright laws mean in this case. People get harassed for sampling all the time (me too, since it’s all I do, and not much is holy in my etiquette book), but what about just stealing an idea? from what I’ve seen, this is just shameless stealing. Even I wouldn’t dare go that far. big up to exyzt, and antivj while I’m at it – interesting blog!
January 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
look at this one!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x75p5w_exyzt_tech
January 13th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Eh, im with you guys and think that you should never copy something. Exyzt layed down the principles for a new kind of vj instalation, lighting gigs format and all the respect to them for this. I agree completely with digiman when he says that “the guy with money and power” should not have copied this. Instead they should have booked Exizt to develope a concept. after all it is them who did al the hard work! Im in the same area of work and am trying to make my own mark (and pay the bills!)
Furthermore the mapping of the lines of the killers image is NOT bad. If you look with closely you can see that there made of pencil strokes and try to imitate a more organic feel…
January 20th, 2009 at 5:10 am
new production ideas are everywhere. the good ones get copied. it is inevitable. the mtv crew did a pretty good job, it is not bad mapping, it is designed to look like pencil strokes / freehand. and it also looks like a pretty big blend of projectors using spyder or watchhout or something similar, and would of taken a lot of time and skill to program.
kudos to Exyzt for the original idea. i wonder how many people know about them now thanks to mtv and the killers. i know i just spent all morning looking through their website…
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:26 pm
[...] bass line intact in the background. The stunning visual design is by the Parisian VJ crew Exyzt. AntiVJ has some more background on Exyzt and some drama about how this set design was copied for a Killers [...]
March 9th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
the killers suck.
go figure they take an idea from someone with more talent and stage presence without giving any credit.
i hope their set falls apart while they’re in it.
March 27th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
[...] – AntiVJ: Exyzt Installation Ripped off by The Killers. [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:57 am
[...] I’ve still never seen live video mapping; that Killers setup was impressive even though it was a ripoff. [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 9:25 am
[...] http://blog.antivj.com/2008/exyzt-installation-ripped-off-by-the-killers [...]
July 15th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
[...] http://blog.antivj.com/2008/exyzt-installation-ripped-off-by-the-killers (denuncia de plagio por parte de los AntiVJ’s) [...]
August 21st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I hope MTV pays for their evilness. But i highly doubt it. Ow yeah I liked the original better. ANTIVJ rocks MTV sucks peace…
August 25th, 2009 at 12:50 am
well actually the real story is a little different..
MTV / The Killers did indeed contact Exyzt and asked them for a similar install to the Etienne de Crecy install.
Exyzt did turn them down for legal reasons (not creative) as they had already exclusivly licenced the installation concept to Gatecrasher for the Boombox tour, thus they were unable to produce a similar install for MTV / The Killers.
MTV / The Killers then simply aproached other artists with the concept and built the show that they wanted which included many elements which were not seen in the De Crecy install.
Amusingly Exyzt copied the idea for the boombox install from Fatboy Slim’s show – hardly an original move! This has now gone full circle with Fatboy Slim’s visuals now featuring a track with the 3d perspective cubes trick copied from Exyzt (see it at 0:48 in this youtube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGTp5QGrac )
Its amsuing to read some of the comments here – oh how little most of you seem to understad about the real world of big budget productions!
October 13th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Nike. hahah wtf.. that clip at 0:48 aint even close to this. get your eyes checked
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