Here you can see the complete background and lightening “equipment” that we have used for our music video. The light on the left side has 500 Watts, attached to a microphon stand, the light on the right is a daylight lamp. The green screen comes from ebay and is about 3x5 m, attached with some tape to the wall and to the floor. The canvas has no function at all, we just forgot to put it away.
This part of the video shot was really fun. This illustrates one aspect of a woman’s personality, a mixture of being seductive and also over-the-top. You can see JAM during the recording, with a blond wig and some 50’s sun glasses, a bikini top and panty, “enlarged” breasts with a bunch of socks, combined with red stockings and pink 70’s high-heels, while trying to look somehow sexy. The make-up is extreme, although strangely it looks kind of normal on the video. Smoking and singing at the same time, while posing and trying not to loose her balance. Kind of an artistic act …
undo = to save yourself from yourself
This is Jam on the green screen in a school girl outfit, practicing some moves before the video shot. The green screen is taped to the wall and the floor, and we had two lights, both originally used for photography: the light on the left has 500 Watts, the light on the right produces day light that should help against feeling down in winter (but actually you only become very tired staring in the light, so I can’t recommend it, except you want to survive the winter sleeping all day).
› Not Plagiarism but Mixing and Matching, Says Best-Selling German Author, 17
I would argue that the callow Ms. Hegemann is missing the whole “transformation” part of the long history literary theft.
But Jessa Crispin puts it best:
… Maybe next she can tell us how we can be authentic by ripping off other people’s original ideas and words.
Finally literature has arrived in the same desolate state of creativity that the sheer mass of sampling in the music industry knows for more than 20 years. Welcome to the club! Stealing ideas and artistic performance is not only annoying, but also a sad thing. If you do that you have to face it: you know that you have nothing to say - and hopefully no one will notice.
Working on our next music video, we test and try a lot with 3D. This is a small example of one test, looks kind of cute, and I really like the bouncing feather-like fluffy hair. The possiblities are sheer endless, and I’m afraid, we’ll have to write a story board sooner or later. At least, this is how it worked with the Beauty video we finished last week.
This is a 3D model consisting of serval instances of our studio sofa. I have no idea if we can use this in our next video, but it looks kind of spacious and inviting.
Another short animation test for our next music video MICHAEL. We are still looking for ideas, because the lyrics are, compared to BEAUTY, kind of simple and improvised during a late night session. Hopefully we make it in time, we have still 23 days to Bahrain left, according to the Ticker on formula1.com.
And another 3D test for our next video. This time, the emphasis is on illustrating speed and velocity. The boxes are just a placeholder, but we’re not sure by now what kind of objects will fly through the air in the end.
We’re trying to avoid the clean shiny look that a lot of 3D animations have, and prefer a more sketch-like appearance. Nice side-effect: the workstation works so hard (and noisy) that we could turn of the radiators in this room - and it is still cosy and warm…
As you can see, the boxes pass through the Michael letters at the end of the video, this is not intentional. If anyone has an idea how to solve this, you’re welcome! Created in Cinema 4D.
Microtech Gefell UM 70 S - we really regret having sold this Microphone. A little bit on the bright side but soooo Neumann-like. The vocals on Beauty were recorded with this one. Love it.
Soundtracs Solo Midi - everything sounded great with this desk! We gave it away .. we have to get it back soon. More info here …
I hate the music business, and there are several reasons why. First of all, it is a rewarding business for only a tiny minority, while the most of us - musicians, artists, fans, consumers - pay. It is that simple.
A long time ago, when Robin and I started doing music professionally, someone told us: “If you really want to make money with music, open up a music store.” He owned a shop by himself, and he knew what he was talking about. He also offered us to sell some equipment in our region in his behalf. And indeed, fueling up other people’s rockstar dreams with even more stuff that creates the illusion of being more capable and talented was a tempting idea. But we didn’t do it, because we are musicians, not merchants.
Being a merchant requires another kind of mind-set, and funny as it is, this is quite opposite to this of an artist trying to express himself. If you really care about your art and don’t want to waste your time with creating something for the audiences’ expectations - whatever those might be, although some of our breed are really good guessers -, or copying what others already have done, then there is no way out:
You have to strip down your carefully constructed, socially accepted ‘defense system’ and try to be yourself, be honest in your expression, what ever kind of art it is. It’s not about manipulating other people’s desires, it’s not about being eager to please, not even about earning some money with your art in the first place; it is about making your stand and let the world know who you are, even if this is mostly a mystery to yourself. If you don’t even try this, what’s the point of it anyway?
First attempt in shooting a time lapse clip. The Nikon D 100 behaved in a very peculiar way, making a picture only every once in a while. Sometimes taking 4 per second and sometimes only one in 2 seconds or so. The battery was kind of down. I made a 10 fps movie of it, sometimes holding a frame for 2 seconds.
An AF MICRO NIKKOR 105mm lens was used.
Music = Excerpt from The Brittnees - Am I worth it
We had a whole lot of fun recording the background vocals for the song Michael last Saturday, February 27th 10. It came out good. The microphone you see is an Australian Rode K2 tube mic. Usable. The vocals came out good.
Well, this is not really a big secret of marketing strategy. Despite the desperate sexual self-display of artists of all kinds, from Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Robbie Williams, Courtney Love, Amy Winhouse, Rammstein up to Tracy Emin and Henry Miller - this could be an endless list - using sex to sell creative work has not lost any of its effectiveness, even in times where we are oversexed and underfucked thanks to cyberspace porn and brutal workloads in our day jobs.
Being quite aware of that fact, it had always been our decision not to use sex for promoting our music. Sex as a hard-seller is such an easy way of attracting interest, and doing this would probably feel like placing a naked woman on a second-hand car in a small retailer’s ad.
However, times have changed. If you are a starving artist like we are (please send money), and you are struggling for as long as we do, and, most importantly, you also recognize that mostly those videos with some sexual teasing catch your own attention more than others, well, it becomes a bit difficult to explain to yourself why you are acting like a musical nun, while the competition strips off their heart and clothes. Are we expecting a sort of purity award by the Roman Catholic church, or why are we simply denying the fact that we are adults and triggered by the same naked skin eye-catchers as everybody else?
For those of you who have seen our DIY music video BEAUTY, this statement might sound a bit strange. But this is not our first video; before that we had a more arty skin-free video version, showing only pure performance. This first vision was definitely noticed by no-one, while the second version of the Beauty video scores with high viewing statistics. Considering the feedback we received this is not only due to its more elaborate and lavish images compared to the first version, but also because of the sex appeal of the Marilyn character that actually was supposed to be a joke.
So now we have the proof of something that really needs no proof: sex sells. Look forward to our next promotion ;)
