My senior thesis film for Motion Media Design at SCAD.
I chose to do a visual music piece for Dominic Fike's "King of Everything". I've always had a special connection with this song, and being able to tribute what it means to me with a motion piece was a ton of fun.
My main methods here were shape-based motion to represent sounds in the song (mainly present in the first half's winding instrumental) and stylization of footage (the second half's lyrical meat). Most of the footage I used was either shot by me on my iPhone 7 Plus or, in the case of a few shots, rendered from elements in Cinema4D and then stylized in After Effects. Some of the footage is also from Vevo DSCVR's live performance of the song they hosted on their YouTube channel, which were then distorted/altered to fit within the themes and color space of my piece's concept.
Process (Footage Stylization)
1. Raw footage clip on Lighten blending mode, above colored solids.
2. Added mask to footage to get out of the way of the type.
5. Duplicated layer and add Tints. Change threshold values to get a more layered look. Finally, offset duplicated layers by a few frames to achieve the final 'chasing' effect.
1. Raw footage clip on Lighten blending mode, above colored solids.