Video backdrop series, part 8: "Waking World"

While this is not necessarily my favorite video from the backdrop series, "Waking World" is probably my favorite song from ThreadSpinner's new EP. My head was flooded with images the first time I heard it, and that is essentially how I define a good song. It takes more effort to NOT create a video for something like this.

If you haven't done so yet, go and download ThreadSpinner's EP (details at the band's website). It's inexpensive, well-produced, and full of gripping, inspiring tunes. This video project would have been a lot more difficult if I hadn't liked the music so much.

Because there wasn't much struggle in the idea phase for this one, and because the motif I had in mind seemed to match up okay with Sarah's suggested themes, this was the very first backdrop video I shot. Here's an excerpt from an email I sent the band describing the concept:

"I want to walk down State Street at night and then speed up the footage, maybe add some motion blur. I'll also walk on a trail in the woods under sunlight and give it the same sped-up treatment... and sort of blend them together, dissolving back and forth. It might look a little repetitive, but the frantic forward movement will suggest the kind of searching you describe, without distracting the audience from the music too much. When I'm on State, maybe I keep going all the way to the end of the wharf and end with a shot of the vast ocean. In other words, what we find at the end of the 'search' is a dark, blank canvas of possibility..."

I burned quite a few calories hoofing about six miles total with my camera pointed in front of me. Some of the walking footage was sped up to 1500% in post-production, so I needed a lot of it to cover a four and a half minute song.

The original cut was relentlessly fast-paced, but I ended up making some changes after hearing a live recording of the song and discussing it with the guitarist, Jon. The energy and tempo were slightly different in the live version; there was more "build." That was one thing I had to watch out for -- the songs would not be performed exactly as they were recorded. Jon eventually gave me some bootlegs from a practice session, and I worked on timing everything to them instead of the ones from the EP.

The revised video starts with an almost drunken, blurry-eyed stumble through a riverbed and gradually speeds up into a tear through town. In post-production I added the black, feathered border, giving the video a kind of tunnel vision, which was meant to tie into the lyrics about "tunneling through earthen promises." Near the end, the video turns into a big, chaotic blur before finding some peace in the darkness off a pier. It was another case where I had to loosen up on the editing and just let it flow.

Here's a quick look at the concert performance. This clip is from before things get really out-of-control. I was working on another clip from later in song, but the pieces weren't quite fitting together, so this will have to do.