Music Video: Lines on your Eyes

LINK TO VIDEO (YOUTUBE )

Kat and I enjoyed a lovely Christmas, with all the gifting, gorging, and celebration you would expect. And then, waking up on the 26th, I was equally joyous that it was all done and over with. After making sandwiches from the leftover roast beef, we headed outside on a crisp but sunny day and filmed the video for "Lines on your Eyes". I edited it yesterday evening, and voila! Done and uploaded in the course of a half day.

A bunch of people have asked how we go about creating these videos, and I don't think it could possibly be more simple. Kat and I start with a pen and paper, planning some ideas around the song's vibe and lyrics. We put down a loose list of shots that we want to get, and then we go outside and film them. While we do that, we often come across other things that seem like they'd work within the context of the song, and we film those too.

After awhile, we head back inside, and I transfer the movies to my computer. In this case, I also had some archival footage from the day in the studio when we recorded the original tracks. I also pulled those in to work with them. Do we have some kind of high-end fancy editing system? No, of course not. I work in iMovie, which is part of the iLife package that came free with my Mac. There are similar applications you can find on your PC as well.

In a nutshell, the job goes like this: you pull in the audio first, and then synchronize your video to match up. At that point, your only limits are a) your creative use of transitions, cropping, and titles, and b) the limits of your cheap-ass editing software, which obviously isn't going to give you all of the capabilities of high-end editing tools. But you might be surprised at the quality level you really can get using inexpensive stuff.

Back to "Lines on your Eyes": this is only the third video we've done for the album. We'll probably do more, but for some of the songs like "The Sands of Redondo" or "Falling Down", I can see us putting a little more effort into both the planning and quality level of the project. As always, loyal reader, you'll be the first to know when we have new stuff to hear and/or see.