Hold On (making of the music video)
What an awesome few weeks it has been!
In a moment of inspiration I decided I should have a play with the idea of filming me singing a song from the album,’Hold On’, at half-speed and then, in the editing process, double the half-speed footage so I would singing in time but it would look like I was singing at double-speed - the exact opposite of what I did for the ‘Mind’ film.
The experiment worked like a charm. I immediately did another take and then shot a few more takes the same way, but with me playing piano from various different angles.
As the footage of me singing went so well I wanted that one single take to play throughout the whole video - the idea being that as YouTube is now such a big part of my music with the videos - and having often been asked to just sing a song to camera - I thought it would be a nice way of making a bit more of the song than that, and make the editing a big part of it :)
I didn’t use any lighting - just the gorgeous sun shining through the window which illuminated the shots beautifully.
As the footage when sped up looked very stop-motion (which I was very pleased with), I decided when shrinking certain takes (to fit more than one bit of footage in the viewer) I’d put them in a frame of sorts, which made it look nicer anyway :)
The only other thing I wanted to add was some footage of a snare drum, one hitting the skin and another a cross-stick - I was lucky the sun was still out and managed to catch some prism-made rainbows on the drum skin too!
Cutting it together was great fun and, unlike ‘Mind’ where I had worked solidly on it for three days, I decided to take my time. As a result, after watching the video back in various stages of editing, I decided that, ‘Hold On’ had to be the first single from my forthcoming album, Have You Met George :D
Hold On: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRK1rHLKgG0
So I cracked on, created some artwork (with the help of Gerry Lane) and got it all ready… It was the most amazing feeling to be releasing a Single - especially having it played on Claire Carter’s BBC Radio Gloucestershire Breakfast Show… I was doing the “Snoopy happy dance”!!
Hold On (on iTunes): http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/hold-on-single/id509801213
I also began writing another new song - this one being titled ‘Lovestruck Fool’ - the story of Cinderella from the point of view of Prince Charming… I feel a theme coming along with these last few songs hahaha
There is also a sixty-second ‘vote’ video I made asking please for your votes on Facebook - having been shortlisted to play the BBC Introducing Stage at Wychwood Festival!!
Vote Video: https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150864569627977
Please vote for me to play Wychwood if you haven’t yet, thank you: https://www.facebook.com/wychwoodfestival?sk=app_334660176568097
All in all a fantastic week, much happening here and lots I can’t mention just yet, but much I can and do :)
Since releasing the single it has been an incredibly inspiring experience. The overwhelming reception of the video to ‘Hold On’ has been extremely humbling… and to reach over quarter of a million views in less than 48 hours is simply mind blowing! Thank you everyone for your kind and generous support. I really appreciate all your wonderfulness :)
Much love, all you lovely readers :D
G xx
