A video entitled ‘I Met The Walrus‘, an impressive animation which tells the story of a young Beatles fan meeting John Lennon in a hotel room, was recently named amongst the top 25 ‘most creative YouTube videos ever’ by a jury of experts.
Over 23,000 videos were submitted from 91 countries around the world, with the chosen few being projected on to the exterior of the Guggenhem museum in New York. Other videos selected by the panel included a super-slow motion clip by Erik Huber, and a ‘lo-fi video experiment’ entitled ‘seaweed‘.
The John Lennon video documents the amazing story of Jerry Levitan, who at the age of just fourteen found his way into the Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto, and managed to persuade The Beatles legend to conduct an interview. 38 years later Levitan, along with director Josh Raskin and illustrators James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina then got together to produce the video using the original recordings as a backing track. ‘I Met the Walrus‘ quickly became a YouTube hit, and currently has well over 2 million hits.
Not long after being added to YouTube, it received a nomination in the Animated Short category at the 2008 Academy Awards, and went one better a year later when it became the first internet video to win an Emmy for ‘New Approaches’.