Anatomy of a Music Video
Every Christmas I try to do something special for the internet group Pet Bunny I've been in for 14 years. This year I decided to create a video. First I wrote the poem, based upon "The Night Before Christmas". After borrowing/stealing photos of the members and their bunnies I did a lot of cut and paste to make the visual portion of the video. Next I needed to compose the music for the background. This proved to be the most challenging part of making the video. The actual composition was simple and I banged it out on a guitar in a few minutes. Next I made a click track for timing and began laying down individual tracks. The rhythm and bass guitars went on first. I following this with a bell pad on a computer synth program to make the sound a little sweeter. The organ followed and it was a lot of fun playing it again after 35 years. I just love the sound of the Hammond XK-1. It sounds so rich! Putting on the vocals was a challenge since my voice is not very suitable for spoken recorded sound. I really needed a deeper voice but James Earl Jones was not available so I EQ'ed the heck out of it and wound up with something that was adequate but not great. It took a couple of weeks mixing the instruments. I tried out a large number of amplifier VST simulators for each instrument and carefully adjusted the sound levels after deciding upon the amplifier/speaker combinations for each part.
This video will not mean a lot to those who are not in Pet Bunny but here is the end result after a month of effort. I know, I know. I'll keep my day job! It was still a lot of fun to make.
Labels: bunny, Christmas, guitar, organ, Pet Bunny, synthesizer, video
