This project was done in my third semester of Visual Communication. We had to look for a sentence or phrase we came across in our life, that got stuck in our heads somehow. Irrelevant if it was negative or positive. It could’ve been something someone told us, or something we read or heard. I chose a sentence my dad often told me especially after finishing my A-Levels and not really paying any interest in where to go now career wise. Translated to English the sentence would go like this: „You cannot always do just what you want and how you like it“.
We now had to do a concept for a project that could arise around the sentence we chose. Therefore we were offered free choice in style, scope and implementation.
I first started off by cutting the „not“ from my sentence, to turn around its meaning to the complete opposite: „You can always do just what you want…“
This way I made it possible to have complete freedom in what I create. And because I love to make music, I wanted to find a way to combine it with the subject. I quickly came up with the idea to write and produce a song with a music video that is connected to my sentence.
My first concepts I came up with revolved around the idea of a song that is about not wanting to work or do anything you don’t want to. Like a teenager who is starting to get rebellious. So I took on and wrote some lyrics about the boring work life I imagined when I was younger. For my instrumentals I wanted to use sounds you can hear on a construction site.
But somehow I lost interest in that whole concept. It was missing this little piece of magic I like to have which drives me to finish projects with ideas and anticipation of the outcome. After some thoughts and time passed by I realized I don’t want to stay in the boundaries of the course. Why not make a song and music video that I actually publish instead of keeping it for the university.
In this case I started writing a song about something that really troubled my heart and mind at that time: love. The feeling of never being able to really love somebody, at least for a longer period of time. About running away from myself instead of finding an answer inside of me and being blind with my heart.
And there I had it. The magic I needed. Because it came from my heart and I was able to dive in and connect with it.
I immediately started producing the instrumentals. When I finished the song I sat down with a friend of mine who would be my camera man for the video to discuss the different scenes and locations. Although the whole video shoot was mainly improvised in its composition. Fitting to the sentence, we did what we wanted and how we like it.
But still some essential concepts were discussed upfront. The color grading should be all black and white while only the fonts used in the video would be colored red (for love). A setting like this would underline the sad or dark mood of the song. I also wanted to shoot a scene where I walk along an avenue with the camera really close to my face and body. The effect should arise that I am running or walking away from something. Followed up by „aesthetic scenes“ as we called them.
Mostly peaceful excerpts of me standing somewhere outside and looking in to the distance. Arising the effect of me searching something. But for the large part of the video we just took off into the city and its green parks, took what we found when I thought it would fit for the video. In this case a lot of scenes we shot didn’t make it to the Final Cut. After I felt like it were enough scenes I started to cut the video.
And there I had it. The magic I needed. Because it came from my heart and I was able to dive in and connect with it.
The Cover
Next to the video I needed a cover for the publishing of the song too. For my ideas I had in mind I looked up some inspirations on Pinterest. The cover should also stay within the color concept of the video. I wanted to create a mixture of photography and line drawing and started with some quick sketches on paper. After a while I found interest in distorting the song title „BLIND“ in its form. I also chose to add some stars because they kind of became a trademark for me as an artist. After sketching a lettering I liked I scanned it with my phone and imported it to Adobe Illustrator where I applied the 3D effect to add more volume to it. As photography I chose an image of a row of trees. Somehow trees and especially forests give me a mystic feeling of distance and loneliness but also neutral peace. Besides that there are a lot of scenes in the video with trees in the background. The dark grey background is layered with a texture of a worn foil on metal I came across one day. But you almost can’t see it on the song cover if you don’t know about it.
