Deb is on holiday so we've spent a nice few days catching up with friends in gardens.
I've managed to start work on a new video in-between, for Trax, one of the most electronic sounding tunes of my entire musical ouvre. The video is a high speend flight through space and the sky, made by patching togethr various zooming effects. It looks pretty, and very artificial and digital, which suits the music. At times I thought it looked too much like a game of Wipeout, too pin-ball, too computerised, but then then music is too, and it's hard to really insert some real-world elements without those seeming somehow artificial.
This way of working; tinkering with effects until I make something that looks good, can work and is valid but I generally prefer to have the idea first and then create the images to fit that. The tinkering option is like a band creating music by jamming and experimenting in the studio (many great albums are made this way, like a lot of Genesis' work, for example). Why do I prefer to start with an idea? Perhaps because the instant of idea somehow feels more authentic, an instant 'genuine' reaction to the music... as though tinkering with the images first could somehow contaminate the idea... but perhaps that's wrong because a music video is also something of a dialogue with the music.
The analogue in painting though is painting without a plan, seeing how the picture evolves, vs. a detailed plan. Now, in paint, the latter often looks better but only because I'm a planned and meticulous oil painter who paints in layers... in terms of creativity, the former is often more creative, more free... odd how this feels more authentic here, yet seems less in music or film. Perhaps both are equally valid.
Apart from pretty colours, pretty lights, and effects there is not much to this video. Its pace and feeling matches the music well; the finale is more intense visually as the music is musically, and the time rockets by, it's stimulating, exciting, a rip-roaring ride. Part of me wants some intellectual content; that it is 'about something' or there there are characters or a story... but, then, some of my videos are like that already, and perhaps variety is good because it pushed us into new areas. There is room for abstract work, images that create a feeling with lights, colours, geometry. Perhaps this video is something like a digital Rothko.
It's more unified than The Dance of Summer. I'm still not quite happy with the unity of that video. I can see good parts in it, but it feels somehow disjointed and arbitrary. I keep tihnking of revisiting it and regret rushing it out.
I'll keep working on Trax. I expect this video will take the rest of the week to complete. I also hope to make another for the tune Magic Mermaidland as an edit of the surreal film The Enigma of the Two Heads. The Pandora video however can wait... with Trax I will learn and have learned a few more tricks to make any future videos easier. Here's a look at frame 666 of Trax so far:
