Me Myself and I Music
Video Editing for a Louisiana Pop Artist
“When creating a music video to promote an EP for a new singer/songwriter, you have to create a visual masterpiece with a storyline flow to it – and it needs to uniquely showcase who the artist is. ”
From Raw Mobile Camera Footage To An Award-Worthy and Iconic Music Video
We got to know Thea Lissi through Payn Kyller Records, who we did some projects for last year, including logo and web design for the Payn Kyller site. We also designed Thea’s website and logo, then in June of 2022, they asked us to create a music video to promote Thea’s EP.
We requested the music from her and conducted research, which we used to put together a storyboard of the scenes we’d like to capture for each portion of the music video. We spliced together a video of the conceptual direction for the music video and sent it to her.
There were several elements that Thea and the Matcha Design creative team wanted to include in her video. We wanted to use colored lighting to match her emotions in the video, and it was extremely important to her that a dance sequence be included since she’s a dance instructor at her own academy. We thought it would be fun to play with the “Me Myself and I” idea by showing her singing to a mirror throughout the video.
Because Thea’s time was limited, we needed to make the video happen quickly. Thea is based in Louisiana, so the scenes were shot by a local videographer over a couple of days and sent to us.
“A visual artist must be flexible; when there are tight deadlines, there’s no telling what could happen. If something changes or doesn’t turn out as expected, you just roll with it – there is no time for a reshoot.”
Challenge
An additional hurdle arose when we found that, while elements of the storyboard were recorded, there wasn’t time for them to record everything we intended for the storyboard. We would need to create a new flow and storyline using the clips we had on hand.
Some of the shots had elements that needed to be digitally removed – for example, there was a fly that was impossible to miss crawling around in one of the critical shots of the music video! The auto-focus for the mobile phone was another challenge, as the phone mistakenly focused in on Thea’s beaded wardrobe rather than her face.
When we were nearly finished, we ran into one more challenge: Thea requested we change up some of the dance sequence scenes before it was approved.
Solution
The first thing once we stitched all the scenes together was go frame by frame, using Photoshop as a rotoscoping tool to sharpen up images and remove intrusive artifacts (such as the fly on a light background). We adjusted the shots so that the entire music video was sharp, smooth and focused in on Thea while taken car of any excessive camera noise.
Once we had a nice flow (timeline) to the music video, we could really have fun!
We added cool elements like color grading, colored lighting effects, “particles” to some of the shots, and a mirror effect during the dance sequence to make it more visually interesting while reinforcing the “Me Myself & I” element of the video. We got to blend multiple images of her together and decide when those images would split out and then come back together again.
We created other interesting effects – such as fading to white, adding a glow behind Thea for her close-ups, and rotating shots. We ended the music video right where it begins – with Thea in the car, about to tell you her story.
Though there were several challenges along the way, this project was incredibly rewarding. We’re so thankful that our hard work and dedication showed, as we won a Gold Communication Award for our Video Editing work. We couldn’t have done it without the exceptional talent and dedication of Thea Lissi, as well as the invaluable contributions of everyone involved.
