Music Marketing Blog #2

 Hey there Everyone! Here is part 2 of our adventure in creating our Music Video Marketing Project!

We started by creating ideas, forming concepts, and overall creating a brand around our given song. This allowed us to overall get an idea for what we were aiming for and decide what decisions we would take while creating it. We decided on a name, Neue for new, and started dividing up jobs and creating a storyboard. This entire planning and distribution process was an essential piece of the puzzle when creating our project as without we would have been completely aimless throughout the entire production. This will be something that I keep in mind when working on the upcoming portfolio project.

We had just finished distributing the work and had started pre-production for the music video. After creating all our scripts and getting the work for each person sorted out we got right into it. We decided that since I was not able to go out due to Covid-19 and some of my teammates were unavailable, Nick would take care of the filming of the project. Everything during shoot day went just fine and the footage was delivered to me so we could start editing. This distribution of work let us focus on our parts and not get too overwhelmed with what had to be done, allowing. us to complete the music video project not only successfully but also to a satisfactory level. 

Editing was a completely different beast all in itself. Not only were we attempting to do some pretty crazy transitions, but we also had to complete everything by the deadline, something that was getting scarily close. Nevertheless, I was assigned to edit and was gonna make sure I did the best job possible. I sat down and started grinding away at the editing while my teammates took care of preparing the presentation and creating the website. While editing, I discovered some great new techniques that I had never used before. One of these is called Datamoshing, and it really saved me a whole lot of work when creating transitions for the video. Datamoshing happens when the compressed keyframes of a video are replaced with data from another video on top or below it. It's kind of like the effect that you get when the antenna on your Tv doesn't catch signal for a second (wait, people probably don't have those anymore do they?), this causes the movement from a previous scene to appear as if it's transferred onto another. This creates a really weird and glitchy look, something we were definitely going for. Another technique I found was that of Pixel Sorting, a technique that displaces the pixels of an image in a different direction and makes it look as if someone was getting warped away like in star trek. Editing was most definitely the toughest part of the project, but the work that was put into paid off and gave me a sense of how I will manage my time for the upcoming Portfolio project. 

Datamoshing from our Music Video

Next, I came back and reunited with my teammates to finish the presentation, merchandise, and overall cleanup of the entire production. Rodrigo did an amazing job on the Website for the Artist and Biana in combination with him took care of the social media. To finish everything, we sat down and grinded away in one day to finish everything. At this moment I was editing and working on the presentation back and forth, so while clips were rendering I would change one or two slides to have more updated graphics. When taking care of the merchandise, I took clips from the original Music Video and Slightly distorted them to make them fit into our design aesthetic for the long sleeve shirts. Not only that, I thought having a consistent theme would make the shirts feel like they were part of a collection that was exclusive to this music video, so the phrase "Simulation Terminated" was plastered across all of them. After finishing the presentation and the marketing, we cleaned up any rough edges, uploaded the Music Video, and Finally submitted our entire project.

Updated Music Video Graphic

Overall, I am extremely proud of not only myself but my teammates for what we were able to create during our time together. Not only did we tackle a complex Idea that had new challenges for us to overcome, but we also came together and wrapped it all up in a nice little package to deliver to all our watchers. From this project, I learned some important techniques that will aid in any visual and artistic endeavors in the future. Not only that, I learned even more about the importance of strong planning in creating a successful product. Perhaps the most important thing I learned was how having teammates who help out when needed can be a make or break for an entire production as a whole. I will take these into account for the future and make sure that I implement them into my portfolio project when the time comes.

Anyways, thank you everyone for embarking with me on this journey, and I will see you next time!