How Art Gets Made

Yesterday we went to the beach to get some footage for a video idea I had. We plan on making a kind of music video that is more of a free jam with a reading of a chapter of "Confessions of the Damaged", a novella series that I wrote and talk about here from time to time.

I wanted footage of the ocean that looked a specific way and so our main goal was to get that footage, but also, it may be the last chance to visit the ocean before typhoon season comes. It takes about an hour and a half from our apartment to the beach itself, and that's assuming we don't make any pit stops for the bathroom or food.

We got there and had tacos and then took our footage, hung around for about 2 hours and headed back around 8 PM after dinner.

On the way back I was trying to edit some shorts to post at INLEO, because the shorts feed (similar to tiktok or instagram reels) is supposed to come out these weekend.

I thought to celebrate the new feed, I should make some slightly higher quality shorts to share. I can't commit to all my shorts being super high quality and I think there will be a time for that as more users come to the platform, but I wanted to have one or two ready that were really really nice.

So I started to edit some footage of a bar street in Tokyo, put 4 or 5 clips together to make it 60 seconds instead of 10 seconds. Cut out the boring bits, then I added some effects to make the video more interesting.

After adding the effects, I felt the video could use some music and a voiceover, and so I spent another 30 minutes trying to come up with the right song/words for the clip.

https://img.inleo.io/DQmRF8FtBSqv9YBGfnMaeeA3Wz6Qr17j9sAce7Yk4QkjYsL/f7e5357c-d691-4e28-bdd0-87cdc695cf3e.webp

I thought maybe I would make it a vlog type short, something I could share on all other platforms as well. As I've mentioned many times, Hive will always be home as long as the community remains cool, but I try to share stuff on other platforms in order to connect with more people in hopes of one day earning more from my art, and bringing more people to Hive.

I got home and I was exhausted but I really really wanted to finish this clip.

I started jamming on the chord progression from one of my songs, and turned it a little bluesy. I liked how it fit and did a few takes. Then I spent some time playing with effects and and editing the sounds a bit. Finally it sounded nice.

The feel of the video was a bit lonely, and so I thought about talking about loneliness in the city, but because I always want to make things hopeful or useful in the end, and there wasn't enough time for catharsis, I decided against it.

I racked my brains for a while and finally realized the intro to my novel would be the perfect fit. It's about a mysterious woman who has can appear anywhere at anytime, looking over humans and appreciating their beauty but and feeling sympathy for their struggles.

The video ended up becoming exactly the same as the concept I originally went to the beach to make footage for today, except the footage was different and the passage was different.

In the end it talk about 3 and a half hours. I don't plan on spending that much time for every single clip on leo shorts! But I figure it will be a nice strong start for my debut on the shorts feed, and it fits perfectly on my other social media pages:

https://youtube.com/shorts/a6H81r6Xk7g?si=NXgbov9Wi00CUAVo

Let me know what you think!

Would love if you could follow me and support me over there too : I+Everything. The more watch time on my videos, the more it gets sent out to other people.

I still intend on making that other video with the ocean, and now this has become a much bigger project. I will make both into series that will eventually tell the two entire chapters. This series will likely be about 4-5 60 second clips, and the ocean one will be 3-4 five minute clips. So in total, it will be almost 30 minutes of footage, and 9 or 10 videos! This is all in addition to the music video that is 80% finished that I plan to release next week.

So I went to the beach with an idea for a music video, came back with a completely different music video and a plan for a handful of others.

That's how the creative process goes.

Last year I was focused on making vlogs, and now I feel inspired to use what I've learned to promote my music and fiction. It's not the best video editing in the world, but I think it works well!

And shorts feed just dropped at Leo, come join me there!
I will share be sharing it there within 24 hours. :-D

Time to go to a festival and collect a bunch of other cool footage though :-D

Posted Using InLeo Alpha