My band is currently in the studio working on our debut album, and we’re planning on releasing at least two music videos for it. One we’re going to be shooting at a show, but the other, for our song “Into The Badlands”, we’ll be using stock western footage and various show clips. Now, we previously recorded the song on out first demo, and I put together a small draft of the music video using the old version of the track, but the final cut will be much cleaner, and with the new and improved recording of the song. I used the Kdennlive software, as it runs on GNU/Linux, and grabbed a few live clips of my band, and some stock western clips from Archive.org, which are all free.

These video assignments can be found here:

Create a Music Video (5 Stars)

Public Service Announcement (5 Stars)

This is for the “Create a Music Video” video assignment.  For whatever reason, when I saw this assignment post, I thought of that terrible Black Eyed Peas song, Imma Be.  Whenever I heard that song when it was popular, all I could think of was that it sounded like the guy was saying “I’m a Bee”.  So I decided to make a parody music video with my spaz of a friend back home.  We mostly just goofed around with the camera and a bee suit, finding ways to play on the song’s lyrics.  It took quite a while to make, but it was fun as hell to do.  When I got back up to Fredericksburg, I put all the footage on my desktop and started editing through the hours of footage we took.  Here’s the result of our labors.

Jim Sardic turned off the video half-way through.  People still connected to the internet do the weirdest stuff, he thought.  He sat in his secondary office, a rundown closet behind a salon in Queens.  Technology still works here, and even though Sardic preferred the old school ways that Manhattan had readopted since the Puncture, his job required him to contact the outside world every once in a while.  The people who made this parody video had been missing for some time now, and their friends are convinced outsiders had something to do with it.  Sardic hoped not; outsiders don’t usually leave the vicinity of the Puncture.  But it happens.  Brooding all the while, he jotted down info on the victims from social media sites.  Their habits, interests, and whereabouts all went into Sardic’s little brown notebook.  He smirked as he turned the off the computer and got up to leave.  “And people wonder why we New Yorkers like our privacy,” he muttered as he walked out the door.

This video assignment can be found here:                                              Create Your Own Music Video

I decided to complete this video assignment to fulfill the requirement in creating a video that relates to our character in some way. If you look back at my group’s radio show Inside Talking, you will notice that the opening instrumental is actually the instrumental from Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk featuring Bruno Mars. This song also just so happens to be one of El Jota’s favorite songs that he currently plays at his night club each night. Sterling (my character) and El Jota became really cool friends after finishing their radio show so Sterling thought it would be funny to do a Bruno Mars impersonation for El Jota’s enjoyment. This really portrays the funny side of Sterling that you have not been able to see over the past weeks.

Process?

Believe it or not, but I actually recorded my own cover of this song using the vocal booth at UMW. I first imported the instrumental into GarageBand and then recorded my vocals on top to mix it all together. Recording the song itself took some sweet time itself to finish, but I really wanted to make this assignment legitimate. After recording the song, I emailed it to myself so that I could access it on my phone where I then was able to play it out loud and then lip sync my own words. I ventured out to different locations while my friend kindly video taped me with my Dslr camera as we roamed downtown. I will admit though that my friend kept cutting the video recording because strangers were walking by and he was too conscious of what people would think of us, so I awkwardly ended up with footage showing nobody else but me. Other than that, I really have no complaints about the video besides the fact that this is yet again another assignment were I successfully embarrassed myself. Hopefully my grade for this week will make up for it.

I just wanted to crawl (or flip) into bed. Once again I chose to do a video for music but this assignment was different. It wanted an actual music video and I decided on incorporating my noir character and another. In all honesty I have no idea who else this is about because I just couldn’t find the right noir character from my fellow DS106ers. Regardless, I consider this involving another character because I took the time to look through people’s blogs and try to find a character. None really stuck with me though. I know, however, that one will some day. I just don’t feel it right now.

My video is about a past relationship Layla had with someone else. It ended badly of course and much of the content of the video incorporates some aspect of their relationship. I added a lot of red because that is Layla’s favorite color and the overall song adds a mellow atmosphere. The fire and smoke reminded me of danger and safety at the same time and that’s what the relationship was. It didn’t last long but it was intense. Layla would actually admit that he was very important to her. Of course, he wasn’t as important as Terrence or Marcus. No one was. But he did get close. Their relationship would be one she would never forget.