Video Edge magazine — August/September 2013
Evolution in Emoji: Mobile Messaging for Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ Lyric Video

Pop queen Katy Perry went digital for the launch of her recent hit, “Roar,” the first single from her forthcoming album Prism. Perry and label Capitol Records released an SMS-inspired lyric video for “Roar” that features mobile messaging service WhatsApp and ping-pong style conversations created from a mix of text and emoji.

For those who haven’t already installed the popular keyboard pictographs on their smartphones, emoji, originally developed in the late 1990s by Japanese mobile carrier Docomo, are sets of 12×12-pixel characters that attempt to encompass the entire breadth of human emotion. They’ve seen increasing adoption in the west, with Apple rolling them into its iOS 5.0 update in late 2011, and earlier this year the Library of Congress added Fred Benenson’s Emoji Dick, an emojified version of the Herman Melville classic, to its collection.

The “Roar” lyric video, created by Joe Humpay, Aya Tanimura, Tim Zimmer and Tuan Le for music label Capitol Records, is centered almost entirely on the screen of Perry’s white iPhone, which the recording artist uses to participate in a group chat with her friends while completing such prosaic tasks as using the toilet, eating breakfast and taking a bath. (Read full story…)