Pokadots Music Video:
This music video is something I have wanted to achieve for over a year. This was a collaborative project where a Professional film producer called Dan from Stillhouse Productions got commissioned to make short films for artists, and I got approached. The video footage was shot in May 2021 in the Trinity Center Bristol, on the top floor. In the Trinity Centre, Dan did his own thing and filmed on different lenses, on a gimbal and got many angles. Straight afterwards, the footage he shot was through raw dull lenses so they could be edited later.
Throughout the past year, I have experimented with putting these videos straight into Resolume Avenue and experimented with different cool effects to see which ones work well. At Christmas time, my idea was to create a long 1 hour/half hour set with the footage, use a variety of Resolume Effects to keep things exciting and try to edit the video in Final Cut Pro. However, this was harder to achieve in practice than I thought because many videos were me dancing to different Tempos. And Resolume Avenue, you have to record and do everything live, and the Software that relies on the CPU and clips stops and starts.
The primary effects used were a Tint mode, allowing me to invert the blacks to white and the whites to blue. This Tint effect is what sells and brings to life the music video, a massive juxtaposition to what was originally dark dull footage. the strobing effect is used in a slow intentionally to feel like a rave/dance atmosphere. My logo is also included at the start to give the track a sense of an intro. In the outro, it would be exciting to play slowly come back from the main effects I had on the video. Fading the Tinted colours back into the normal real-life colours shows off the effects in how effective and bright they are, but also is a way of bringing the audience out of my world into reality. This was thought out and is effective, giving a sense of emotion of 'oh no, it's over.
After a bit of time away, I remembered the original video edited by Dan was to one of my songs, Polkadots. The Software Final Cut Pro and I still did not get along, so I thought to swap to using Adobe Premiere to edit clips that can be used in Resolume," something I was scared to learn and avoided. Using Premier helped bring my ideas into an actual composition. I created a workflow of editing videos like I was editing audio in logic using the scissors button and copying and pasting.
The order of live Videos in the Trinity Center set was the structure of videos kept to the final music video. Many hours were spent structuring the clips to fit the song in time and reflect the audio, and the final product worked well. Through experimenting and finding playing all of the clips one after another, I took inspiration from Youtubers when creating content; the new norm is to have quicker video transitions between different shots work better to keep the watcher's attention. The track set the pace for me to edit the video. With thorough attention to detail, I have created something that is not boring nor repetitive and constantly evolving, just like the track and works well in a dance track.
Throughout the last year, in Resolume, I explored creating a visual aesthetic that visually represents me. The Polkadots track behind the video is Techno, psychedelic, cinematic and euphoric. To portray such an innovative track, I wanted to explore how I could use Resolume to spice up the video by adding different layers to keep it from being raw. These effects can be seen throughout the music video and were dubbed in time using a Faderfox pro in Resolume. I only took inspiration from the various effects in Resolume and made a point to select my favourite products to experiment with. The final video's desired outcomes were based on Cyberpunk-like, futuristic, and innovative aesthetics.
Using the Fader Fox allowed me to have hands-on control of Macros of these effects, which I can then swap between. These effects were pre-programmed to do different things. Like the Displacement, the effect transforms from moving from left to right to the track's tempo. This displacement effect tells the most psychedelic, trippy, Flange morphing sound. A static blend mode on 4x mirror mode was used to give an added bit of detail/ bring to life the space I was in. The Static effect appears on the venue lights and church glass behind me, which might have been noticed without this effect. Other effects like a flip mode in the X-axis, mess with the viewers' sense of perception.