An example video with its background story

[GregB]

"Prescient" (2015) was my second album, but this time 100% home produced. While "co-written", in fact my collaborator Martin Hale wrote/performed half the tracks using Logic Pro at his place. I did mine on Pro Tools at my place.  We rarely met!  Martin did one music video for one of his songs. I did the rest for all the other tracks except one for which I could not find any images that worked for me.  While we were both really happy with the results, we subsequently pulled them as, after some ugly court cases with giant firms chasing small hobbyists, we could not guarantee that ALL images/clips were actually clear of copyright.  We still continue to enjoy them and share them privately.

 

Towards the end of my first year's membership of www.artgrid.io (2020), a regular check at constant new content finally uncovered a real option for the 'missing' music video.  The 'story' had 46 clips, and at least half of these would suit Martin's sombre lyrics about  Alzheimers.  

 

The song's key line "who's that bloke upstairs" COULD be regarded as something of spiritual question, but I imagined it visually as an old bloke passing his bedroom mirror, not recognising himself in the reflection, and therefore confusedly thinking there was a stranger in the house.

 

With Artgrid's approach to 'story', the large number of clips allowed me to have the same character shown throughout the 3 min video.  The only 'manufactured' image was the POV passing behind a young man's head to reveal an old man's reflection.  This resonated hugely with me: now in my 70th year, I still FEEL/THINK as if I'm in my late teens .. but reflections/photos tell the hard truth!   This clip (00:48 and 02:36) and has three components:

1. A random 'back' of head shot from free site. Background removed and saved as PNG to retain transparency
2. A good sharp 'blank stare' from one of the Artgrid clips ... exported as a still
3. A good looking mirror on a darkish plain painted wall.  The original was portrait, so I rotated it to fill the landscape frame (but I realise now that I forgot to 'remove' the hanger which can be seen at mid right!!). The 'glass' area of the mirror frame was deleted, and the whole image exported as PNG.

 

The visual stack was a) the young man, b) on top of mirror/wall , c) on top of old man (showing through the 'hole' in the mirror).

It only started to look good (for me) when the three layers were given different brightness and then animated independently of each other: the two heads panned to our left at different speeds. The young man slowly zoomed and increasingly blurred as if a camera was moving to peek over his shoulder, and the mirror slowly zooming as we get closer.   I would have liked to get the old man's gaze to be a little more direct to the young man's face ... but hey, you work with what you've got and within budget ($zero)!  

 

Results shown below.