The Hadestown Project

This past week felt loooong. Not because I didn't have fun - I went home and spent time with my family, my brother was back from Austria and it felt nice and warm to have everyone together in one place. But each visit home reverts me back to my old teenage self and I inevitably become lazy and refuse to socialize or go out for any reason whatsoever. Yes, I was quite the social butterfly when I was 16.

So I decided to utilize my time - if I was going to be glued to my laptop, I might as well do something useful. So I made this little piece:

It's a montage of a little jazz thing Stefan and I went to a couple weeks ago. Peter Georgiev does some amazing things on that guitar and deserves every bit of reognition he gets - people don't tend to think about how difficult it is for musicians in this country and to have someone with that much potential and talent grace our scene with this genre of music is truly a rare thing.

I did something quite similar to this several months ago - same kind of music, same musicians, same venue. It's difficult to keep things different when the elements haven't changed that much. So I decided to good around with After Effects with this one and had my mind set on those intro freeze frames that are in so many Guy Richie movies. Lucklily, for a complete After Effects newbie like me, there is ECAbrams' YouTube channel to show me every step I need to take.

It's funny how you see something and you say "'that sure looks cool" and you don't really think about how much work goes into it. It took me 3 hours to get those 5-10 seconds just right, mainly because I had to start from scratch 4 different times. The first try took me an hour, but the last I did in 15 minutes. I guess repetition is key here.

So this is me dipping my toe in After Effects, testing the waters and finding that they're deep, but quite inviting. Let's just see how things turn out as I go deeper.