in the last days people often talked about this type of stop motion.
This technique already appeared in a musicvideo of the year 2001:
“Peter Licht – Die transsylvanische Verwandte” (see on youtube)…

Greetings from here to there…
Stefan

- starts and ends female asleep in bed
- starts with a female, has male and female together half way through, female alone again at the end
- includes the “fish” sequence

Plus, of course, having a very similar-looking female protagonist doesn’t help!

The Blink/Mankovsky video is far more distinct and clearly derives from an original idea even if the animation techniques are similar.

In other words, if two or three designers copy an idea, it is a rip-off. But if, over five years, thousands of designers adopt, adapt, and alter the concept, giving birth to countless diversification of the initial concept, has the idea now entered into our collective visual language and become a legitimate part of our vocabulary?

A super-simplified example:

Were early cinematic adopters who included lens flares as an aesthetic choice (as opposed to simple mistakes) considered to be copying the cinematographers before them who initially decided to do so?
I realize this is not as specific as the spots in question.

The same with Bullet Time? What’s the relationship between the work of John Gaeta (Bullet Time), Dayton Taylor (TimeTrack), and Tim Macmillan (time slice)? Did they not each build on the work of the other?

If I use Legos to make a stop-motion music video, am I ripping off Michel Gondry?

Where’s the threshold?