The Zenith project is a very unique one. We get to design and create our own projects, no limitations. The only thing is that it somehow has to connect to our elective class–mine being film.
Let’s first talk about my pre quarantine Zenith plan. Since junior year I wanted a reason to write my own song and I had always planned on incorporating it into my zenith somehow. Back then I was an animation student so naturally I was pretty constantly exhausted and delirious but I knew I’d make it happen somehow.
fast forward to senior year and I started seriously thinking about my Zenith. I decided I wanted to talk about how glorious non glorious things are––specifically in light of a place called Joseph Oregon. I wanted to document the people of Joseph and the history of Joseph and how beautiful the simple life is. In addition to that I wanted to write a song that would go along with the documentary I was going to make. I became set on making a poetic documentary in particular. when my idea was okayed by mr. t I started researching songwriting and poetic documentaries. I have been playing guitar for many years and I’m pretty well acquainted with music theory but I had never seriously tried writing a whole song before so I spent a lot of time researching songwriting. Since my projects required me to go to a place, I had to spend the first bit of our Zenith projects working time on writing the song.songwriting is pretty hard.
Anyways, that was a waste of time because everything went crumbling down when there were travel bans and we were all stuck at home because of the virus. I was unable to get to the place that I so badly wanted to document and like many other freestylers I had to completely rethink my zenith. I still wanted to write a song and I still wanted to make a video with it. I decided I will try to go to Carmel California which is a small cute beachy town that kind of resembles the same type of Simplicity Joseph has. I was still iffy about that because our stay-at-home order and going out with it in place is very difficult. So I spent a lot of my time trying to write a song, again song writing is really hard. I would work for 2 hours and get one line of the song, come back in frustration, work for another two hours and at that point only have about 10 seconds of the song.
At one point, I had about 3 Different songs going with very different sounds. I was losing hope and I had no idea where I was going or what I was writing about. At first I was writing about the beauty in simplicity and all the sudden I wasn’t able to go out and be inspired by the outdoors and people.
After talking with mr. T, he helped me realize I needed to write about what I knew. I knew what it felt like to want to go out and not be able to. I knew what it felt like to be scared of the world and feel hopeless and helpless. But I also knew that I was very hopeful in that I knew that everything was going to be okay and that all I needed to do was change my point of view. I was constantly telling and reassuring my friends and family that everything was going to be okay and that you just have to have Hope and Faith but I wasn’t listening to my own words until I finally started writing my song about what I was telling everyone. Within about two nights of writing in this light, I had my song. I then developed a finger-picking pattern in a chord progression and was ready to record.
Alongside having a burst of inspiration and finishing up my song I decided I would just go to Carmel and get as much b-roll as I could. I got lots of videos of the ocean and of the Town looking really calm and quiet and of me playing the guitar. At this point though I didn’t have a finger picking pattern nor did I have my lyrics locked so I was just playing guitar on camera without any direction really.
A couple days later I recorded my song and started editing that video. The song was not syncing well at all because all of my best takes were done when I played guitar separately and sang separately and saying each lyric about 5 times until I sang one I thought sounded all right. This resulted in the song not syncing up together at all in me having to make really weird cuts here and there. It sounded extremely slapdash and on top of that the footage did not turn out that well. I had some pretty great shots and really pretty and aesthetically pleasing shots but there are more bad shots than good shots and the footage just didn’t tell a story at all no matter how I edited it.
Feeling defeated and upset I decided I needed another shooting today. This time I didn’t have a full day of shooting to give so I decided to go to a more nearby Beach called Half Moon Bay. There I got even more footage of me playing guitar of the ocean and of the flowers. I came back and used the same recording as I have previously, the one I wasn’t very proud of, but also Incorporated the new footage I had and edited it to change with each chord change which I thought gave it a better Cadence.
It didn’t sound so great I didn’t look so great and I finished it feeling not so great.
This was break down time. alongside the approaching deadline for the Zenith project I was also having to get mine done much sooner because my family was preparing to move and I was going to lose Wi-Fi and I was way behind on packing and everyone else in my house. with mr. T’s help I came up with a new plan.
My song was solid. All I needed to do was re-record it in a better and more thoughtful way that would set me up for success. I got a good recording of the guitar and with that recording I put it on my computer and played it through an earbud so that while I was singing, I could hear the guitar in real time and be able to just go into Premiere and sink them up nice and easy.
Once I got the song All synced up and sounding good I would export that out and go film a music-video style video. I would play the song allowed while I recorded myself playing guitar and singing that way it actually looks like I was singing and playing my own song.
almost the whole point of my original idea was to keep me in the dark. I didn’t want to see my face too much or make it all about me. The irony . Now the video is completely all me. I won’t say I’m completely fond of that and how that specifically turned out to be because I genuinely and generally wanted it to be more nature and less human focused but with a given situation I did what I could. I needed more of a story, more of a character with my song and so I needed to make it a music video.
I went out to the hills and sat on a log and listened to my song out loud, cringed a lot and recorded myself singing and playing the guitar.
I came home and edited it and it already looked so much better. It looks like a pretty mediocre music video with a pretty Mediocre song and I felt pretty much all right about it.
I ended up using different types of different recordings of me saying that they all synced up well because I’d been listening to the guitar track for all of them luckily.
a couple drafts and at its later I added in some sound effects like wind in the trees and birds in the forest, which gives it the nature vibe I was looking for, and I played around with the color. The footage itself came out really nice and looks very colorful and mostly clean but I felt there was an element missing from the video so I decided to, in coordination with the lyrics, make the first 3rd of the video Dollar in cooler toned and then has the lyrics pick up and become more hopeful make it warmer more vibrant more saturated and overall happier looking. This was just a small detail that I think made me feel a little bit prouder of the video.
I know I’m very self-critical but I do feel like it’s a pretty Mediocre song with a pretty Mediocre video with a given situation having to move and be quarantined I did my best and I’m proud to say that I have written a song in that now sits in my very large stack of music I know how to play on the guitar.
Being a first year film student I learn so much with every project I do, so I’m glad to have a music video under my belt. I could have learned how to put all of those cool effects and transitions into this music video but honestly that wasn’t the vibe I was going for and it would probably look really out of place with the very simple and Light song and very simple and easy going footage. I guess that’s the one thing that kind of ended up shining through from my original idea. The song may not be about the simple life and the footage may not be documenting a beautiful small town , but in the grand scheme of music genres and video genres it’s pretty simple and lighthearted. I just wanted to help people slow down and feel joyful and calm amongst everything and I feel like in a way I achieved that through this video and song.
I’m not the greatest singer on Earth I’m not the greatest guitar player on earth nor am I the greatest video editor on Earth God knows and mr. t knows … but I am proud of myself for having written and song a produced a music video on my own.
I literally went to two different beaches, had several shooting days, spent many many hours trying to write a song and basically ended up completely scrapping and redoing it, Landing me with what I just showed you.
Overall im just proud of its message and i hope it sticks with you guys
Things are kind of scary right now but find some hope and hold onto it, even try to find some beauty and the situation that was in whether it be beauty and your little brother’s laugh or in the stillness of our Earth––whatever it is find it and smile about it. There’s still so much to be happy and hopeful about.
Well that’s that.
Stay cool.
Goodbye.