A hectic day that began waking late then darting to town to peek at Christmas Sales. Exhausted by the crowds and traffic, we headed home at lunch, then Deb acted as cinematographer and camera operator as we filmed some videos for The Dusty Mirror. In video terms, it will certainly be my most ambitious album to date.
'Fear Of The Thing Itself' will include me singing the chorus. Most of the film is puppetry, as I may have said. There will be a top layer of digital animation, which will include lyrics. I used 4 layers for 'Cat Covid!', but that hugely slowed down the whole process, so I'm trying to limit to two. In this case the top layer will be added, not masked. I've been thinking if I can update Argus to export an automatic mask and colour layer as separate renders, but this might be impossible.
Then I donned a red face for 'Except For The Hatred', and some eyes for 'Moments Of Terror'. It's not clear, but both used the same strong red make-up. The eyes from 'Moments' were inspired by the eyes of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood's 'Bride of the Monster'; the road by Lynch's 'Lost Highway'.
The studio room is freezing, below 10 degrees, so it's quite arduous to film there. I'd really struggle doing it without Deb's help. Filming was complete by 15:30, then I performed the basic file conversion, then time to eat and a trip for more useful shopping this evening.
Most of the videos are at least started or fully made in some draft. Of the 12 tracks, 'Since You Kicked Me Out', 'Norman Bates', and 'The Arm' remain.
