
Jarrett Heather presents: Word Crimes (2014) - DonHopkins
https://jarrettheather.com/wordcrimes/
======
DonHopkins
Common Ground - Jarrett Heather “Word Crimes” Music Video Artist

[https://vimeo.com/103615214](https://vimeo.com/103615214)

>"Yeah, no classes, just, you know. I think people really underestimate the
value of just sitting down and reading the manual."

------
DonHopkins
Jarrett Heather is the artist behind Weird Al's "Word Crimes" video released
in 2014 (at 48.4 million views now).

Word Crimes:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc)

Weird Al's spot-on parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" with T.I. and
Pharrell Williams:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyDUC1LUXSU)

Weird Al contacted him after being impressed by "Shop Vac", his previous work
with kinetic text (typographic animation), which he made using animation tools
like AfterEffects.

Shop Vac:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sOfO8Ei1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sOfO8Ei1g)

This page on Jarrett Heather's web site tells the story and shows the art and
technology behind the "Word Crimes" video. He's also published the Animatic
storyboard-in-motion that took about 100 hours, to Weird Al's original home-
made demo of the song! It's fascinating to compare them, and see how their
ideas evolved from storyboard to final video.

Jarrett Heather presents: Word Crimes:
[https://jarrettheather.com/wordcrimes/](https://jarrettheather.com/wordcrimes/)

>The Completed Music Video: In November 2013, "Weird Al" Yankovic asked me to
direct an animated video for "Word Crimes", a parody of Robin Thicke's
"Blurred Lines" about the supposed abuse of proper language.

>The result of 500 hours of work in After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and
Premiere goes by in 3 minutes, 44 seconds. I hope you find each one of them
entertaining.

The Animatic: [https://vimeo.com/102959171](https://vimeo.com/102959171)

>This storyboard-in-motion took about 100 hours. Al signed off on this design
on January 25th, 2014, only 3 weeks after he gave me his homemade "demo" for
Word Crimes, which you can hear on the animatic soundtrack.

>If you watch very closely, you might notice a gag or two that didn't make it
through to final animation or some very subtle changes in the lyrics.

Jarrett designed the Live Journal logo in 2000 or so, and parodied it in the
video, with a broken pencil tip.

[https://jarrett.livejournal.com/208198.html](https://jarrett.livejournal.com/208198.html)

Here's an article about Jarrett Heather from around the time the video came
out, that was previously posted to HN:

Elk Grove animator thrives as ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s partner in ‘Word Crimes’:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140725043615/https://www.sacbe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140725043615/https://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/17/6564802/elk-
grove-animator-captures-spotlight.html)

