I use my video camera a lot. I shoot video on vacation, and sporting events, and all sorts of other places, and editing it down for upload to Facebook or YouTube. Often I’ll put some music underneath it; it serves as the glue that connects things together. The process goes something like this:

1. Throw all clips that seem interesting onto the time line.
2. Put all the clips in some sort of order. Sometimes this is chronological, other times I’ll try and make something more cohesive.
3. Trim all the fat from each clip.
4. Now that I know roughly how long the video will be, find a song that’s around that length and fits the mood of the piece.
5. Throw the song into the time line, and futz with the video to make everything line up with the music.

It’s definitely not scientific, and it leads to some interesting choices at time. I was working on a video from a swim meet where I had edited 30 minutes of races down to around 6 minutes of video. I wanted some peppy music to go with, but there are very few six minute high energy songs in my collection. The song that does work: Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

The high energy parts are awesome, and the ballad parts go well with the beauty of swimming. Did not see that coming.

Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and often the context of the song is taken advantage of. For example songs can be used to evoke the memory of the era when they were popular. Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth has been used in movies from Panther to Forrest Gump to evoke the unrest of the late sixties and early seventies. However, the song was never about the chaos of the era, but instead about the closing of the Pandora’s Box club on Sunset Strip. It’s new context has made the song almost mythic, but it’s purely coincidence.

For filmmakers, it’s really easy to ride the coattails of a song’s context to improve the film. Romantic comedies can safely break out popular love songs, practically bashing the song’s context over the audience’s head in an attempt to create emotions.

More skillful filmmakers will play against the context, putting a song in a new light. Quentin Tarantino’s use of Blue Suede’s Hooked on a Feeling was just the beginning of masterful use of song, context, and cinema.

When I’m working, I try very hard to not choose a song ahead of time, because I like being surprised at how well music alters the work. Often I will specifically use songs by friend’s bands because I won’t have to worry about the context of the song altering my intent (or YouTube’s copyright detection). I’m often looking less at context and more at rhythm, feeling, and cohesiveness with the rest of the piece. What really surprises me is when including a song alters my context of it. The strongest example for me is Purple Balloon by The Roseline. It’s a song that I really love, and it’s wonderful to see the band play it live (they are a fantastic live act), but whenever I hear it I can only think of the two weeks I spent scanning photos for a video for my Grandfather’s funeral. My grandfather was a modest man, and I learned more about him in the two weeks after his death than I did in the 31 years prior. Like a song that reminds you of a breakup, I can’t listen to it anymore.

Talking Head’s Once in a Lifetime has been used to evoke the go-go eighties, but I associate it with Dallas in the early 2000’s, when I had their CD in my car. The only song I can think of that has no context would be Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’.

No matter what this song is played against, it will always be awesome.

Context is a powerful thing, and in many ways it’s something record companies fight to protect. Often a song’s context is based off the time it was popular, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the future. With the fall of radio, iTunes, Pandora, and everything else, is there really a way to connect a song to an era anymore? Do we even have a collective pop-culture consciousness?

Nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot has a new album, Zero Day. Frontalot is a DIY hero, who has created his own career, nay, his own genre of music. Zero Day has all the nerdy wordplay MCF is known for, but takes it to the next level in production value. The album also features cameos from Beefy, Schaffer the Darklord, and Mike Doughty from Soul Coughing.

The first single is a theme song for Wil Wheaton, Your Friend Wil. Check it out!

Tim Burton’s Batman was the definition of “awesome comic book movie” for me. First of all it was PG-13, which meant it had far more action than PG rated films; I was 12 when I saw it, and the “pen is mightier than the sword” moment still freaks me out. Second, the visual design was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Up until that point live action Batman meant Adam West and the ‘Bat-tucci’, so Michael Keaton’s brooding vigilante was just so cool.

It’s no surprise Batman was the third Spanish video I made.

Google Readers click here for video.

The story: Gotham Nuclear Power plant has been taken over by the Scarecrow, and Batman goes to stop him. (Points for super-brief recap!)

If you’re wondering how the scenery actually looks like a power plant and not my basement, it’s because my father, who works for Xcel Energy in Minneapolis, was able to get me permission to shoot at one of the coal fired power plants in Minneapolis. We were allowed to shoot in the old control room and in some of the unused parts of the plant (with supervision of course). For a high school video, the setting looks fantastic.

I’m still amused by the “Danger! Nuclear plant!” sign on a music stand used for the establishing shot.

The costumes were done by my mother (who also does the costumes for the Movie Monkey) and Jason’s mother Penny who did his Scarecrow costume. This was a zero-budget production, so there was a lot of creative use of sweatpants.

Penny did the Scarecrow costume, and my mom did the Batman costume with help from an actual rubber cowl provided by Jason. The main problem is that the actor playing the main character, me, was a 98 lbs weakling in high school and there was no way I was going to fill it out. I’m the frumpiest Batman ever.

I look like I’m posing for a “Before” photo.

Before Photoshop

After Photoshop

This was the first (and last) time I ever wrote my own score, composed and played on an Amiga 2000 (the computer for the creative mind). I had dreams that I the second coming of both Steven Spielberg and John Williams, but it was apparent after the fact that I was a kid with a copy of Deluxe Music. If you can play three notes and play them backwards than you can play the challenging Batman score.

It was also my first use of green screen/chroma keying

The live action from the above shot was taken from the third floor of my high school, looking down at some of my sister’s friends from her Spanish class. According to her, her Spanish class had seen my videos their sophomore and junior years, and by senior year they were asking her if they could be in them. Apparently it was cool. I’ve never had outside confirmation on that so it may have been something you tell your little brother to make him feel good, but I’d like to believe it’s true.

I wrote this as some sort of email rant back in 2002. As it never made it onto a livejournal page, It can finally have it’s blog debut. Sad thing is I still agree with… me.

Isn’t it ironic that the Recording Industry of America is claiming people are unfairly stealing from them? I mean, isn’t that like Pinochet claiming that some guy on the street is unfairly killing people he hadn’t gotten around to yet? “Oh, I’m sorry for stealing – we as the music listening public forgot that that’s *your* job.” Lets face it – between enslaving artists and over-inflating music prices, the recording industry doesn’t exactly have an exemplary ethics record to begin with.

Ok, this is a topic that in the grand scheme of the world falls under “Hair color of Gwen Stephani” in the importance-o-meter, but many people are paying lots of money to blow it out of proportion, so I figure I can throw my two cents in, since everyone else already has.

Here’s the thing – the largest percentage of people who download music are 18-25 year olds. These are not a group of organized terrorists, having secret meetings plotting the end of the RIAA. It’s easier than that – they’re just POOR! They’re either in college and living off ramen noodles, or not in college and have the incredible income available to those with a High School education. Face it, 18-25 year olds do not make incredible amounts of money – unless, of course, they’re singing with 4 other white guys on stage.

A major point of confusion seems to be the difference between “using digital music” and “stealing digital music”. There’s a reason people use MP3’s – they are a convenient medium. The players are small, the playlists are large. Now, here’s where I’m lost. In 9th grade economics we learned this simple concept called “Supply and Demand”. You see, when demand is high for something, you increase supply. The RIAA’s approach is the complete opposite though – customers want it, so it *must* be a bad thing and be destroyed. And look at the alternatives they give us? If people want cheap, convenient music, they can join a record club! 10 CD’s for 4 cents, and then you get inundated with paying full price for albums no one else wanted for the rest of your life. Wow, Chumbawumba’s latest? Gee, thanks.

Why doesn’t the recording industry encourage MP3 swapping anyways? Kids giving their friends tracks from their favorite album isn’t stealing – it’s FREE ADVERTISING. Maybe they’ll become fans and buy the t-shirts, posters, and other krappy paraphernalia sold with a group.

So, to summarize – yes, people steal music, but the recording industry stole from us first. If they had some common sense, they would realize the marketing potential rather than focusing on 18-25 year olds who can’t afford to pay outrageous prices anyways.

This one goes out to my friend Brian Hindman in Texas. Back when I worked at Dallas Semiconductor Brian and I were both misfit toys – Brian was a computer programmer sidelining as a Christian singer/songwriter, while I was a computer programmer sidelining as a filmmaker. In the computer industry creative endeavors are generally looked upon with an inquisitive head tilt, so it helps to helps to have a partner in crime.

Brian helped me finish The Emperor’s New Clothes by doing some additional vocals and the score, for which he learned to play the recorder and the mandolin. He then went on to a more ambitious project: producing the album Breaking Ground, which was a collection of original songs by members of his church. He recorded each of them in his home studio and did all the mixing of the songs. It was quite an endeavor, especially since the songs ranged in styles from bluegrass to rock. I actually really liked Matt Stevenson’s “Standing” from the original recording he made in Brian’s home studio, and I asked Brian if I could make a video from it. Bear with it – I hadn’t learned pacing yet, and so as a video it’s fairly slow.

Brian’s song “My Life Is An Empty Tomb” has just been put on rotation at Live365 radio, so here’s hoping for his future success.

Cory Q, voice of the Movie Monkey, has posted the 3/26 episode of his radio show The Funkomaticjamatron Presents online. Lovers of tripping out rejoice! Download it here. Could we be so lucky to get a podcast in the future?

An old co-worker/soccer teammate Scott took these photos through his wife’s pregnancy and was generous enough to let me animate them. The music is “Six Fourty Five” by OK Jones.

So rather than go to our company prom, a few of us decided to get together for a night of Beer and Rock Band. Warning: more proof that I can’t sing follows.

I knew two things after the MC Frontalot YouTube contest deadline was extended.

1. I wanted to make it better
2. I would need help to do that

Thankfully I got some help from Marshall Miller. Marshall and I have known each other since college where we collaborated on The Emperor’s New Clothes together. He’s now an animator at Bazillion Pictures in Kansas City. Marshall added compositing, Z-Ray rendering, and other big words to the animation, taking it to a whole other level. I also played around with After Effects a bit on this one, and let me tell ya – me like. Me like a lot.

MC Frontalot is having a DIY video contest for the single “Wallflowers” off his new album Final Boss. I made this as an entry. When you hear nerdcore dance music, who doesn’t think of dancing Transformers?