It is official, today! Now available is the high-quality DVD of the music video 'Dance of the Technoids', with an extra 12+ minute "behind-the-scenes" interview with yours truly about how I wrote the music and created the 3D graphics, as well as a solo guitar performance by Ian. It is now available for purchase at 'The Lost Records' on-line music store.
It is a great joyful relief to have completed this huge project... now it is time to focus on my family, especially my wife who has worked at least as hard as I to make this happen. I owe her everything, with my eternal love. ttfn, Drakonis
I can feel it... this Technoid DVD project is almost complete! The video shoot for the 12 minute "Behind the Scenes" feature is complete, editing is done, and a final draft of the video is ready for OK'ing... I am very pleased with the results! I show the music-writing software and the 3D computer ray-tracing software I used for this. There's also a very sweet recording of Ian playing a solo piece on his guitar on the DVD... we drove up to his place and set up mics and the video camera, and he gave a very solid performance in the soft light of the living room there.
As always, there are little smirky in-jokes sprinkled through this video... including the meaning of the Japanese sign on the door to the studio.
It took some research and shareware fees to find a good way to capture the Mac screen to show how I write music and create the 3D computer animations... I can heartily recommend iShowU, a very nice Macintosh shareware utility for video-capturing moving screen things.
So, rummaging around for some mouthwatering eye and ear candy, I have chosen to start my first-ever blog with my first-ever music video. Enjoy! It's description is below.
-Link Here- Bouncy Electropop music with aliens dancing around large lava lamps (suggesting that music is literally "universal".) Reaching into my 1980's musical subconscious, I wrote a catchy "Depeche Mode"-like techno-flamenco tune, and then created a mosh pit of Technoids dancing to the music in a hyper-realistic dance hall called "The Candy Bar". Music written note by note in Harmony Assistant and finished/EQed in GarageBand. Live acoustic Spanish guitar performed by Ian Beardsley. Video rendered with POV-Ray Mac, and assembled in iMovie. For the technically curious, there are over 1,200 lines of POV-Ray code (all written by hand in the text language, no modelers were harmed...) to create this. The 2.5 minute movie (in final anti-aliased form) took about 14 continuous hours to render all the frames on an old dual 1 Ghz G4 Mac. Free MP3s of this music and others of mine are available at SchwanSongs, or Macjams. This is my first foray into music videos, I'd love to hear your thoughts (pro and con) about the music and video. A high-quality DVD (with a 10+ minute behind-the-scenes "making-of" video, and a trailer for another music video of mine) will be available soon for purchase. I have a much larger, rather different, 3D music video project in progress now.
