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Cancer, Canon, Canon 60D, Death, Deliverance, Faith, fcpx, final cut pro x, Ghost, God, Hold On, Holy bible, INDNGRL, INDNGRL Entertainment, INDNGRL Photography, Music video, photography, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, terminal, tutorial, videography
Just like with photography, videography has many different parts and genres. I was taught the basics in college on how to use my camera to create,commercials, movies, music videos, ads and so forth. The basics can take you but so far. You have to push beyond and learn and grow with each steps.
Trying new things and projects are time consuming and sometimes nerve wrecking. You research themes and looks you want to go for and in a sense mimic them. With music videos the music is the main component. You are creating a visual story from a story that has already been written to music. So the first step was getting with the artist and in this instance it was my Husband, Chris. He wrote a song in a dark time of his life when his previous wife passed. Although, the song was not completed it was enough to create the visual story around.
We came up with a treatment (storyboard) for the video. We had 5 scenes in mind. We shot two of the scenes in a horse barn attic. In the song he talks about suicidal thoughts after losing a loved one. So the first half of the video is about having the thoughts and beginning to act them out. Images of his children will bring him back to why he should continue to live.
One aspect we added was evil and good. Portraying evil and good could be done in several different ways. But because we have no budget we improvised. So throughout the video you will see the dark hand and the light hand enter in the scenes to lend to his decisions of whether take his life or live his life. The evil assist with handing him the tools; the good steps in to pull him back. All of this set in a dark scene to depict a dark part of his life. The good parts of his life are depicted in light memory sequences through out.
The second half of the video, although he is still in a dark place which will take awhile to get out of, he goes back in forth in his suicidal thoughts and what he is living for. Than faith enters back in his heart to set him on a better path.
The scenes are dark and gritty. Blurry scenes lead to the mind being filled with fog and shaking it off.
We’ve added real candid footage in the video to the memory sequence as a way to lend to what does he have to live for: children, music, mentoring, memories of his lost one and so on.
But another aspect of the song was his faith delivering him from this dark time. This aspect was added months after the original footage because I felt it was missing. We hear it in the song but there was no real portrayal. Simple fix: film the Bible focus on a book and verse on what God says about Suicide.
And finally: when filming you are not always going to get the shot so you can fill in the blanks easily in a music video in several ways: The artist performing on a plain backdrop, closeup on face singing, studio setting singing, set in front of a piano if the artist plays. You can do body shots: folded hands, tapping feet, hands in pocket. So we added the aspect of the recording booth because the artist wrote and recorded in the booth. Although he isn’t singing the course, his adlibs are through out the song and bringing that feel was important.
But enough about the Technical watch the video and help me get better. (Edited in FCPX)
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