Make Me Psychotic Music Video

Even though I always knew that singing was my true passion, I studied film direction in Barcelona more than a decade ago. I try to remember kindly the artwork I made back then, considering that I was psychotic and depressed at that time, but I am aware that, despite all the efforts I made, those works were not very good. The silver lining is that I gained some knowledge and experience about film making that I can apply now in making my own music videos. 

I've been recording videos for YouTube covers for the last two years, but I have not recorded a video for one of my own songs until now. I did record one for the song 'I'll Be There for You' of my first album in 2016, but I was very fat back then, and the quality was amateur. So, although this new one I've made for the song 'Make Me Psychotic' is far from perfect, I'm very content with the result, considering that it has all been made within the four walls of my bedroom and with a very small budget. 

At first, I thought about the padded room as the main concept for the photo shooting and artwork of the physical distribution of the album 'A Scream in the Night', which I intend to make in the future, even if it's just a few copies. Later, I thought it would be cool to use it in the music video of the first single, so I began to think about ways of creating the padded room without using the green screen recourse. So, what I did was ordering some foam rubber on the Internet, cut it into equally measured squares and add later some adhesive white leather on. Finally, I put the squares together on the walls that surround my bed, which is supported by a white chest of drawers that made it look like the perfect white floor I needed. The space was small but effective enough to use it for close-up camera shots. 

I also thought it would be interesting to add some backstory in the video besides the padded room concept, so I decided to introduce the doctor character to create this contrast with the mental hospital patient, and give this message that anyone, including people who work on the medicine field, are vulnerable to develop a mental illness. For the shots where both of them appear together, I had to film the patient's first and then, walk out carefully without moving the camera angle or the table and items on it, go to the bathroom to shave off my beard, change the clothes into the doctor's and record his respective shots.  

I wanted to use the green screen again for the final shot, where I walk out of the hospital, but I found out this new AI tool available on the Internet for video creators and, although I was a little skeptic at first, I decided to use it leave it that way in the final cut of the video. I look much thinner than in the rest of the video, but it still works effectively. As I said before, the result is far from perfect, but I like how I managed to create something decent with the little means I had. 

More videos are to come, stay tuned!  

MOVIE RECOMMENDATION - The Ring

Television has always been a source of terror. It's ironic how an invention that was supposedly created to facilitate communication and interaction among human beings has ended up becoming a tool to manipulate and control them. Makes you wonder if that was the real purpose in the first place. The same thing happens with social networks, where anyone can make a fake profile and use it to harass or stalk whoever they please. It all feels like an inevitable reflection of our nature as a society, desperate for attention and validation but incapable of engaging and creating meaningful connections. If technology and artificial intelligence are supposed to mimic human behavior, no wonder it's going to be cruel, contradictory, and manipulative.  

That's probably one of the main premises behind the tech-horror subgenre, with movies like 'Videodrome', 'Unfriended' or 'The Ring', a remake of the 1998 Japanese movie. I saw 'The Ring' in the theatre twice, so you can tell how much I enjoyed the movie back in the day. This psychological thriller mixes the supernatural component with the earlier mentioned techno-horror and turns it into an instant and iconic classic, with an impeccable cinematography. I must admit that I never pay much attention to cinematography, but in this case, it's easily noticed as one of the best aspects of the film. The blues and the whites all feel coherent, so you don't have the sensation of watching a different film sometimes, since there's this continuous connection between colors and frames.  

Then, there's also the great Samara ghost imagery, which looks terrifying, mysterious and iconic, especially in the first film. The sequels are ok, but they don't live up to the expectations of the original. Most people hated the third one, 'Rings', but I think it's not that bad. Even though they changed Samara's backstory and, therefore, altered continuity, it was very entertaining, and they took special care of the cinematography in that one as well. It would be interesting to see another take on the story. Now that our relationship with technology is constantly changing and evolving, it would probably follow the idea that was already presented in the first act of 'Rings' and the ending of the movie 'Smile 2', whose predecessor was clearly inspired by 'The Ring'.