Music Video for PNEUMA

Over the summer i had a chance to work on a music video for a PNEUMA, which was a huge learning experience for me.

PNEUMA is a local Leeds band who wanted a music video to be released alongside their track Take Me There in late October. 

It was very clear up front that i wasn't going to be paid for this project, but i was happy to take it on initially because it would help me become more familiar with freelance projects without the pressure of it being a "proper job". This did however serve to make me unmotivated as time went on, and with the start of third year the project got put on the back burner, and as of when i am writing this blog post the video will not be released in October as intended due to the focus on dissertation research. I will continue working on the project until the video is complete, however it will not be finished any time soon.

I was also rather upset when i came to PNEUMA about the problems with the schedule and they attempted to put the responsibility of not only being responsible for the release of 

The problems i faced initially was the sheer length of the project. 5 minutes is a very very scare amount of animation to do, however the way i worked around this was by using live action backgrounds (as they could be filmed very quickly, and i had collected almost all of the shots i needed within 3 days) and by making the characters very simple and animating them with DUIK.

(i ended up cutting out the character with the tear drop head as three worked better for story and mean't less animation)

I was also tasked with writing some kind of narrative for this video, which was another big ask. I kept it simple and generic, the song is about music being a passion, a good thing, something to strive for, so i decided that the characters should go on an adventure to find the source of the music, ending with them at a PNEUMA gig. Along the way they would get into mischief and fall out with each other in order to also add the message of music bringing people together at the very end.

The first draft of the storyboard was way too short and not very detailed, and the animatic had large areas where i had no idea what to do, so i had to revisit this and add around double the amount of thumbnails in order for the music video to have a narrative.

Though i was quite worried about my skills at compositing, with motion track and masks i managed to make something i was quite proud of and was happy to show off on social media.

I do hope to finish this project, i am currently 1/3rd of the way though, and by working a little bit over time i hope to finish before January.