I came back to the song “Atlantis” today and had to scour my records for all the chicken scratch lyric sheets I have collected over the last six months. I have three different notepads that I use to jot stuff down … and I knew that I had some ideas somewhere.
After finding the right pieces, I transcribed them into my ‘puter and set out to make some sense of it all. I’m going to try to get this one tracked this week. I’m not sure about the guitar tracks that I recorded last summer in Palouse. I know I’m going to re-track at least one section with my Grendel Dead Room. The rest of it could work with a little mixing and slight EQ.
Maybe …
I have been working on the timeline for the “No Escape!” music video. It has a total of 47 shots on it right now (I couldn’t fit them all into the screen cap. above). I had quite a few new scenes to drop into the timeline. It looks like I have about two thirds of the backgrounds finished. Most of the scenes have been animated, but there are some that need work.
After Effects isn’t doesn’t have the most intuitive timeline editor, so slipping and moving groups of clips can get messy. If you bump something one way or the other, you have to keep track of what else gets affected by that move. It is my application of choice for film making, so I can live with its flaws.
I hope to finish this video by the end of the year. It has been a great project to work on when I don;t feel like doing anything else. I just sit back and draw out scenes … block by block.
Liz and I are working on the above scene for the music video for the song “No Escape!”. It may involve a multi-stage (three image) perspective shift as the blue creature advances out of the subway exit. I’ll start with the character being the size you see above, but as she walks down the path and towards the view, she may grow in size a little.
It may be tricky to pull off. I am doing this to a whole shot earlier in the film by widening the view progressively in steps four times. This requires redrawing each scene multiple times and changing the scale of the objects in the scene accordingly.
I might need to work on the subway exit itself too …
You can see the next shot in the video here, to get an idea where this subway exit is located.
Anyway …
It’s coming along…
I recalibrated the song “Atlantis” tonight. I’ve been doing this as I go through and record the final tracks in order to prepare for mixing. I’m trying to hit about - 18db on my Master Bus before I do any sort of pseudo “mastering”.
When I was in middle school, I was put into a special group called “Future Problem Solvers”. It was some kind of experimental educational track where we would group up and try and find solutions to global problems like acid rain and nuclear war. Our answer to every question was always the same:
“Put a dome over it.”
Acid rain melting your skin? Live in a domed city. Nuclear missiles coming your way? Live in a dome. Global warming? Dome time. Global viral pandemic? You guessed it.
No one took our recommendations back in 1987 … and look where the world is now?
You can see that in the old Imagic game “Atlantis”, people lived in underwater domed cities. I guess it never helped them though …
I finished tracking the song “Breakaway” today. I originally thought that I was going to not use layered vocals takes, but I was wrong.
I have twenty vocal tracks.
They are not all going at the same time, of course. There are points in the song where I have as many as 6 or 8 vocal tracks rolling at once. I kept some of the takes that I recorded while in was in Palouse last summer.
That brings my “completely tracked” song count up to four. I haven’t revisited many of the songs since my two week recording session in June. None of the others are really done and they are in various states of disrepair.
I should probably tackle “Adventure” next. I was never able to get the right guitar sound while I was in Palouse. Maybe my Grendel Dead Room will help out in that category.
I tracked some of the final vocal takes for the song “Breakaway” from my solo record “Bits” today. I have just a few lines to go.
I hope to get this one wrapped up tomorrow…
Liz made this background plate for the “No Escape!” music video for my up coming album “Bits”. I’d say we’re almost halfway done with all the background plates.
So far, this animated movie has been constructed on a scene to scene basis, created directly from a story in my head. I should probably start to sequence some of the new background plates into my working composition in After Effects to see how the imagery is keeping pace with the music. I have all of the main scenes and the story arc worked out … but I lack a detailed storyboard.
This has made the whole project less structured, but maybe a little more fun. The large pixel size and limited colors leave some room for the imagination to fill in the blanks.
