Thursday, April 30, 2015

What's in the box? WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!!!

After roughly three months of working on music videos for the Sarge and one for myself, I feel like I'm really flexing my Adobe Premiere muscles once again.  Boy, Premiere certainly beefed up it's editing options since the last time I tinkered with it! I did experience some buggy issues with Premiere Pro CC 2014 so I had to try and limit my later videos to the previous version just to avoid crashing. Weird. But it felt great to record footage and then get in Premiere and play, play, play. And did you know that you can use Photoshop to edit video footage, too? Holy smokes, it completely blew my mind! You can do all of the same awesome photo editing to your video footage for a whole new level of digital wizardry! Boom. So cool. Needless to say that I hope to do some more video fun stuff soon. Here are the finished videos:







Now it's time to focus on other projects! And there are plenty! So what's next in my creative box of crazy concoctions? Here's what's cooking from May thru September:

Music:
Finish songs for fourth album "Feast of Villains". I'm trying to get this one released by early July so I can bring some CDs to the Montana Dark Arts Festival. I'm crossing my fingers since the songs still need a lot of work.

Still need a song about Alex de Large. He's one of my favorite villains. Not sure anything I write will be Clockwork Orange worthy, but I gotta do it.

Need to photograph images that correlate with as many songs on the album as possible (there will likely be 12) and photograph cover art.

Need to create press release for album.

Need to create album trap-in and CD label.

Music videos for my songs? Hmm. Not sure how to swing this one.

Need to update my website when the album is done.

Need to select songs for Dark Arts Fest and start rehearsing, it's in July. Gah!

Need to design and create costume for Dark Arts Fest. Do I echo one of my villainous songs? Hmm.


Dance:
I'll be choreographing and performing in the local IndepenDance performance this coming September so it's going to be a dance centric summer, for sure! My piece will be science fiction inspired, very replicant Blade Runner-esque.

Need to finish the song for my IndepenDance piece. It's almost done, need to record vocals and figure out if the album song will be exactly the same as the dance piece song.

Choreograph the piece. It's going to be fast with plenty of stage patterns due to the large group of dancers. Sketches will help immensely. Rehearsals start in June. I'll have three months to complete the six minute dance with 11 dancers.

Costume all of the dancers. So begins my weekly visit to thrift stores in search of science fiction inspired clothing. Think Blade Runner. Nothing apocalypse looking. Looking for black, silver, pops of color, sleek, strange, minimal texture, odd materials or details, and comfortable to wear and move around in.


Photography:
I recently had the wonderful opportunity to photograph the Yellowstone Ballet Company's production of The Little Mermaid. It was so beautifully crafted and enchanting! There are more dance performances coming up so I'm hoping to share more dance photos soon.

Here's a link to the pics:  The Little Mermaid


Just for Fun:
I really want to create a cartoon called The Adventures of Dahlia and Persephone just to capture some of the ridiculousness of our two young kitties and their puss-cat hijinks. Our two girls are so full of the friskies and always eager to learn and explore new things. Maybe animation? Just some simple sketches? Hmmm.


Opening quote: Seven