Tempered Glass
Tempered Glass the Ep that Zak is creating this semester. Early on we decided that we wanted to make a sort of visual album to go along with it.
The process of doing so has been incredible. On top of being true collaboration, this project has allowed me to use all my lo-fi film skills to create work that I am proud of and that demonstrates understanding of how to use the tools I have to make artwork (that while being obviously made with no budget) that expresses ideas. The best example of this is the video that goes along with the third song on the EP. It consists of a single shot that is just one huge zoom. To do this I used an old camcorder that I own, because I know that it has incredible zoom power at the expense of pixel quality. In post production on the video I slowed the shot (which was about 45 seconds of zooming) to fill the song, and editing the colors and resolution so that I accentuated the blurriness of the footage. This made the fuzziness seem like an intentional choice instead of an inadequacy in the quality of my commitment.
Because my equipment isn’t ideal, I have made a concerted effort to make artistic choices within the film that stand on their own, and that demonstrate that I understand how to make film that is visually engaging while also saying something.
On top of this I have all my usual struggles with film, most specifically audio. In the first video I wanted it to seem more like a live performance, so I had Zak perform Alone live. When I started to edit the video it sounded terrible, so I edited the audio in an attempt to make it sound better. It didn’t. I let it sit like that for a week or two and then returned and did some creative editing so that it didn’t seem out of place when I used the original audio that will appear on the EP instead of the live recording.
I drew much inspiration from watching Visual albums from more established artists such as Beyonce, Florence + The Machine, and iamamiwhoami. They helped me grasp the telos of a Visual albums in that it adds a kind of narrative which aids the listener/viewer in grasping the meaning of the piece as a whole.
Working with Zak is good because we get along very well, and trust each other to make appropriate artistic decisions (although this mostly works in my favour). Luckily we haven’t run into much conflict within this project (although I guess there is still time to do so).
Tempered Glass the Ep that Zak is creating this semester. Early on we decided that we wanted to make a sort of visual album to go along with it.
The process of doing so has been incredible. On top of being true collaboration, this project has allowed me to use all my lo-fi film skills to create work that I am proud of and that demonstrates understanding of how to use the tools I have to make artwork (that while being obviously made with no budget) that expresses ideas. The best example of this is the video that goes along with the third song on the EP. It consists of a single shot that is just one huge zoom. To do this I used an old camcorder that I own, because I know that it has incredible zoom power at the expense of pixel quality. In post production on the video I slowed the shot (which was about 45 seconds of zooming) to fill the song, and editing the colors and resolution so that I accentuated the blurriness of the footage. This made the fuzziness seem like an intentional choice instead of an inadequacy in the quality of my commitment.
Because my equipment isn’t ideal, I have made a concerted effort to make artistic choices within the film that stand on their own, and that demonstrate that I understand how to make film that is visually engaging while also saying something.
On top of this I have all my usual struggles with film, most specifically audio. In the first video I wanted it to seem more like a live performance, so I had Zak perform Alone live. When I started to edit the video it sounded terrible, so I edited the audio in an attempt to make it sound better. It didn’t. I let it sit like that for a week or two and then returned and did some creative editing so that it didn’t seem out of place when I used the original audio that will appear on the EP instead of the live recording.
I drew much inspiration from watching Visual albums from more established artists such as Beyonce, Florence + The Machine, and iamamiwhoami. They helped me grasp the telos of a Visual albums in that it adds a kind of narrative which aids the listener/viewer in grasping the meaning of the piece as a whole.
Working with Zak is good because we get along very well, and trust each other to make appropriate artistic decisions (although this mostly works in my favour). Luckily we haven’t run into much conflict within this project (although I guess there is still time to do so).