Jelly Belly Makes For A Sweet (And Superhit) Single!

Twenty-six year old singer/songwriter Kina Grannis, was looking for a creative way to film the music video of her new hit single 'In Your Arms'. That's when her director Greg Jardin came up with the crazy suggestion of making the entire set with Jelly Beans.

While it sounded like a great idea, it was not easy to implement. Greg who was inspired by Jelly Bean mosaic artists like Roger Rocha and Malcom West, began by asking a friend to sketch the 2,460 scenes that would be part of the video. Each scene was then animated on his computer in the sequence it would appear.

Then began the real work - Hand creating each frame! Greg projected each scene from the computer to a board and with the help of 30 dedicated volunteers, filled the backgrounds with jelly beans. While some frames took only 5 minutes, others, took as long as three hours and that was with three volunteers working simultaneously.

Once that was done, it was time for Kina to perform her magic. Before filming the actual video, Greg recorded the singer acting out the entire song, which he then super-imposed on the animation created on his computer. This gave him a better idea of how the music video would turn out. Kina then sang the final version, most of it lying down on the frames with a glass placed in between.

The 3-minute video took 2 years and 288,000 yummy jelly beans (donated by the Jelly Belly Company) to make. But the result as you can see, is pretty stunning and the song is not too bad either. Judging from the over 3 million views the video has garnered on YouTube since it was launched, Kina, who received this year's MTV award for Best Web-Born artist, seems to have created another super hit song! Now all I am wondering is, what did they do with all those Jelly Beans??

Resources: odditycentral.com, digitaljournal.com