I’ve been incredibly busy, and so I’ve been completely neglecting this blog. I haven’t updated with any interesting discussion topics, but there are also a lot of projects that I’ve worked on that have been released over the past few months. I can blame my 8 month old son for taking up all of my time, and some might say that’s a good excuse. Or the fact that I moved across the country and have been trying to get settled, but those are just excuses.

My post today will combine two projects I worked on in completely different capacities, but because they’re both music videos that were released around the same time, I’m going to lump them together. Kill two birds with one blog post and all.

The first, on the left side of the image, is a music video for DJ Smash, an incredibly popular DK in Russia, for the song “Star Track”.

I was the VFX Supervisor for this music video/short film. I say it like that because it practically is a short film. It has a narrative, and doesn’t do the typical cut to story then cut to band thing that a lot of music videos do. I was on set for the shoot, helping to plan out the green screen shots and making sure everything was filmed as efficiently as possible. And then after getting the edit, I led a small team of cg artists to complete the visual effects. A lot of time and heart went into this video, and I think it shows. I’m incredibly proud of the end result, especially given the time and budget constraints we were dealing with.

The other music video is for the song “Adore You” by Ember Fx.

Over 2 years ago Michael Berns of Ember Fx approached me about this idea he had to make a music video combining elements of 8-bit video games that many of us grew up on and love to this day. I was tasked with figuring out just how this could be achieved while keeping the production small. After designing the look and coming up with a rough story idea, we filmed the video using Michael’s living room and a large green screen he had on hand. I was the director and vfx supervisor on this project, as many smaller productions require you to take on many different roles.

That was the easy part. Once filming was complete, there was a lot of time spent refining the edit, adding fx, and pushing the boundaries of what we thought we could do. Anything is possible with cg these days, but you always need to work within restraints of time or money. Luckily, this video had a lot of wiggle room with its deadline, allowing us to polish it in ways that would not have been possible if we rushed it.

In the end I’m incredibly happy with how this turned out. There are a lot of fun things going on in this music video that still make me smile to this day. While it was two years in the making, an incredibly long time to produce a music video, I think the final product shows how that time was not wasted.

A huge thank you to Aaron Sims, DJ Smash, and everyone at the Aaron Sims company who worked with me on the “Star Track” music video. And to Michael Berns for getting me involved with the video for “Adore You” and continuing to push me to make it better.