I made a videoclip for IfSounds

This time I had a new esperience: first time I make a clip for another band.

My friend Dario Lastella sent me some DVDs with IfSounds footages about Midsummer Raving, a track enclosed in their (then) namesake record If, a collection of songs from '93 to 2005.
They changed in these days their name from If to IfSounds, enrolled a couple of new bandmates (for singer Elena it's a coming back, plus a new drummer) and decided to give another spin to Midsummer Raving.

To me it was a double challenge: first of all, I had to assemble footages shooted without a storyboard. Second, I usually make videoclips from my most unlistenable / avant tracks (quite masochist, under a commercial point of view); while this track is a melancholic ballad about loneliness and abandon, with no bass nor drums - just voice, guitar, piano and viola. Very melodic and pop.

I pointed on a juxtaposition between B/W and color blasts by still images, slow editing with fades (just one dry cut in 6 minutes), a classical multi-splitted screen. Simple and plain.
I added a drummer video sequence, despite there are none in this track, as Ifsounds with this clip wanted also to present the new line-up enclosing new drummer Enzo Bellocchio.

Well, this is the result, I'm quite happy with it.

New Videoclip from Outskirt: Зимний дворец (Zimniy Dvorets)

after Intro, from Etoile, I finished another video and released within september!
This time I went back to Outskirt, and chosen Зимний дворец (Zimniy Dvorets, the Winter Palace).
An historical theme: 1905 St. Petersburg bloody sunday. Subject is the Winter Palace, empty after Tsar Nicholas II leaved for Alexander Palace because of that massacre: an outskirts zone. Despite being in St. Petersburg center and rich as a royal manor can be, it was empty like a desert for a while. Interesting, when there are mutations.

Video tells about this story, showcase the palace, outside and inside, then steer to history with original footages - very bad coded, I had to struggle for half an afternoon to achieve a good acceptable quality - and pics, all taken from Wikipedia, pianist comprised.

Clip have a strange old russia taste, not communist nor tsar-like. A generical first last century russian scenario. And it seems more like a documentary than a videoclip, exactly what I aimed to right from the start.

Of course I added the famous stairs sequence in The Battleship Potemkin by Eisenstein, as it was what inspired me that endless scales hook in this song (the other, more romantic classical - opening and closing the track - was after listening the nth time The Carnival of Animals by my beloved Camille Saint-Saëns).

New Videoclip from Étoile: Intro

I just finished to render and upload on Youtube Intro videoclip. This time I found right tech info on HD movies. Master is in HDTV PAL 1080p (1920x1080), but I rendered it at 720p (1280x720) to follow the exact Youtube HD standard.
No loss of detail as After Effects picks from same original files and redraw from scratch all frames. Rendering time about 2,5 hours. Online HD version of Intro videoclip is broadcast quality, in fact.
I think this is last video I assemble with AE: it's a madness make anim sync with audio. Because you can't hear anything while scrobbling the timeline. It's a powerful tool to make single sequences with FX, but not to manage a whole project, better go for Premiere or the like.

Subject of video is swines. I like them, they're clever and it's a stupid common place they love to squelch in the dirt. Vietnamese little pigs are clean like cats. Video is an operatic dadaist inferno - where pigs are menacingly main characters. Not an happy end (as it's my favorite mood), but everybody knows what's a swine destiny (no gory images, anyway). I think also a good video introduction for a live show, to let the people get at once what's the overall climate.