Explorations
The Exploration Project
The exploration project is the final project included in the Junior year of a freestyle student. It’s main goal is to encourage exploration of new skills and desires of the student in question in order to promote self-thinking and self learning. I’ve always been passionate about music so I chose to meld my passion for film with music and make a music video because my band Alien Rock had recently released a new single.
What I did in order to get prepared and learn more about music videos was watch a ton of them from my favorite bands to my least favorite bands and try to find common similarities and differences. This led me to analyzing a large portion of the music videos and chunking them into three large bubble groups: The Performative, The Conceptual, and The Narrative. Performative music videos on the whole are focused more on the band and center around the performance that the band delivers in order to make up most of the content. Conceptual music videos focus around one solid concept such as performing in zero gravity or animating with legos. They are done to music in order to make the concept more available to the public and more catchy. Narrative music videos are explanatory in that they focus on one all encompassing narrative that the band either progresses through or that some other entity progresses through.
This explorations project made me really happy and I think I learned a good thing about music videos and how to make one along the way. I used the mix of Performance and Narrative music video for my band Alien Rock! in order to create a fun story in which Aliens come down to earth and take over humans by turning them into Aliens. My favorite part was getting to make the music which I made myself in Logic Pro X and which my friend Spencer Cook sang on. On the whole I think I learned some really important skills about syncing music up to videos and how to edit for a performative / narrative music video. This was one of my favorite projects and I feel like it grew me as a person into being more introspective and self-learning.
My final product is listed below:
Infographic
This infographic we were tasked to prepare is to convey more information on the subject and to put in layman’s terms in order for more people to understand it. I did mine in Adobe In-Design and based it off of a movie poster with the three categories of music videos and their traits.
Experimental Music
Another fun project we were tasked to work on is Experimental Music. I’m very interested in experimental music and I love making it (see my personal projects and you’ll know). So I took on a more ambient approach to this experimental music because we all need something to work on. And since my rat Ginger recently died I decided to dedicate the song to her and made it a serene representation of her passing into the afterlife (very pretentious, I know). I made this in Reason.