You know how sometimes the scrappy fan made video is better than the official video, which the label spent thousands on? Well, some music biz guys figured this out and launched genero.tv, which hosts contests for aspiring filmmakers to submit music videos that could, in turn, become the band’s official video and land them with a $2,000 dollar paycheck. Winners are chosen democratically, via online polls.

A still from Mike Amin's fan video for Bang Bang Eche's "Nikee" Photo Credit: YouTube

Recently, our favorite Australian dudes — Bang Bang Eche — got the Genero treatment for their track, “Nikee.” The winner was Mike Amin, who described his inspiration this way:

This video for Bang Bang Eche’s Nikee is a 2D rendering of kick-a$$ New Zealand rock. The black and white theme is a nod to the punk rock feel of the music, but with a low-fi technology edge reminiscent of 80s-era raster text (thanks to the synth). Both aliased and anti-aliased text combine and transform into living characters on-screen. Japanese emoticons also play a big role, as they are more expressive than the ones we’re used to in the west. Heavy influences include Shynola, Tim & Eric, Nintendo, and the greatest music video director of all time, Michel Gondry.

How did Amin do this? We’ve got an idea… Did you know you can just go here and convert a photo to text? Now, imagine doing that with thousands of frames… You get the idea…

We tested it with a portrait of our hero of the day, Lin Yu Chun — you know, the bow-tied Chinese boy who stole Whitney Houston’s vocal chords and is set to become the new Susan Boyle…

Photo Credit: CTV/Photo2Text