Music Marketing Blog Post #2: The Overview!

         Looking back, this was easily the most intensive project that I've ever done.  Not only was this probably the most enduring, but it was just so vastly different compared to what I would normally do.  For the past decade or so, this was probably the first time I ever had any influence in the making of a music video, or pretty much any video for a school purpose.  Most of my projects would consist of the usual.  Y'know what I'm talking about, either a: presentation, essay, or something close to that margin.  So having a project like this was pretty scary and cool in a contradicting way.  The creative input for a music video sounds so cool, but it was also pretty taxing on me and my brain.  Although this project was easily the most fun I've had on one, that doesn't steer me away from the fact that it was still challenging.  

        Researching was no problem.  Like I've just said, the more "stationary" portions of this task aren't as bad as what would come up, since I'm pretty used to it.  And in fact, I thought this part of the project was fairly enjoyable.  Usually, when I do research on a topic, it's something really flat, like maybe a book from my English class, or global warming.  This topic actually interested me a lot, which was really nice, since it pretty much boosted my work ethic.  I think the idea of working on something that you not only have more interest with, but with people who also take an interest, the work seemingly seems smoother.  So having our research-based upon the rock genre allowed us to gather quite a bit of information.  We not only learned from their marketing strategies but took some inspiration from a couple music videos, especially Foo Fighters!

        The most challenging portion, at least in my opinion, was the brainstorming portion.  With the song, Something from Nothing in hand, I just had no clue on how to formulate a story for this song.  Like I had a lot of good ideas, but there was just no way I could account for them for the fact that this was just a high school project, and not something being funded.  So as ideas flew left and right from my peers, we all thought one idea should remain fairly solid no matter what route we would go.  The idea: Something from Nothing, we figured must remain prominent throughout whichever way we would construct our music video.  And so with that in mind, we all seemingly just took that, let it sink in for about a day or two.  I was still really stumped on how to make a story from this song.  

        Usually, when I'm in a predicament like this, I pretty much turn everything aside and only focus on THAT.  So I grabbed my longboard and decided to head to a Starbucks.  With access to free drinks, thanks to my sister who works there, the idea seemingly came to mind after around an hour or two.  Now, I posted about this portion in the last blog post, but I'd figured I'd show it again here too.  

Click here for a better view/insight on the brainstorming:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/936663059554666744/7913597702181548775?hl=en

        So after about three coffees, and five or so pages, I'd figure a story retaining to a boxer would be nice.  Not only would this allow for us to fit our budget more cleanly, but, allow the idea, Something from Nothing, to stand out prominently.  I pitched it to my group, and they seemed on board with the idea.  And don't get me wrong, the story wasn't necessarily perfect, but it was just a rough enough draft to help get us started.  

        Now for the storyboards, I figured I should take the reigns on this portion of the assignment since I thought I'd make it flow the best since I had an overall story brewing in my mind.  Plus, I really didn't want to deal with the social media portion of this assignment, just simply wasn't my cup of tea.  And the storyboarding was pretty okay.  It was extremely hard to match the lyrics with what was being displayed, which lead to a couple rewrites of certain portions of the story.  But overall, it wasn't bad at all, and I think I did a pretty good job.  

 Here are the storyboards, which I did on my iPad!!!

        Now I presented these storyboards to my group, and they were all cool with how it looked, with some exceptions tho.  I pictured a boxing match to be included towards the end of the music video, but logistically speaking, we all figured it just wouldn't be possible with the time span that we had.  So there were going to be some portions that would not only be cut out but also be added in.  We originally planned for this music video to be just purely storytelling, with no instruments.  But after taking a little gander on YouTube, the idea of instruments being in the music video didn't really seem all that bad.  The whole Rock music video industry is just comprised mostly promotional, so I figured it'd be fitting to put some instrumentals in there as well.  

        Now for the part that everyone was essentially waiting for, shooting!  It was definitely cool being the actor in this music video, especially in the guitar video bits.  We figured Regional Park would be the best location.  The large green fields were great for the boxing scenes, and the stage that they have there would look really nice for the guitar bits.  Now after being picked up by Rodrigo, we essentially had all the props ready, courtesy of everyone on set.  Now for the actual recording, it went pretty nice.  We managed to gather all the footage in one day, which was convenient for not only the fact that we didn't have to go outside for another day, but also gave me more time to edit.  

        Editing wasn't really hard, just really, REALLY time-consuming.  The transition from making videos that weren't heavily reliant on audio and video being correspondent, into a music video was a rough one.  Making the audio match with the cuts, footage, effects, etc. was just pretty tricky, but I did get used to it after a while!  The edits I used, like the kaleidoscope effect, and the certain transitions were cool to actually integrate, considering I wasn't really able to do it on other projects.  Also, one part of editing that I DO NOT look forward to is constantly hearing Something from Nothing.  I seriously hear it in my sleep, I think I've heard it about 70 times now.  

        Now the presentation.  I am TERRIBLE at presentations.  It's not really about the idea that I can't remember the content, or I'm lazy or anything like that.  I just get really nervous when it comes to presentations.  With any project, from Global Perspectives to English, I just can't really come myself down enough to speak coherently and get my point across.  So because of this, I figured it'd be best to only speak about one slide, even though I would've really loved to talk about more.  I kept this in mind throughout the entire project that I probably wouldn't be speaking a lot at the presentations, so I really wanted to do a lot in this project.  So although I didn't speak a lot during the presentation, I still feel like I managed to pull my weight via editing the video, storyboarding, and pitching the idea.  

        Looking back at the project as a whole, I learned quite a bit.  Firstly, I felt like the amount we accomplished in one week was pretty impressive, and gives me confidence for projects, especially for the Portfolio project.  Also, I believe my editing skills have been sharpened due to this pretty challenging project.  I felt it was really great practice for what's to come.   One thing that I learned was how to properly work with people.  I tend to work better on my own, so working with three other people seemed like they would hold me back, but I was fortunately wrong.  Working with Julia, Rodrigo, and Jaxson not only made the project flow better but would ease some work off my back.  And pretty much socializing with some new people was pretty nice!