Prior Experiences/ Aha Moment
So this week in ITEC was all about digital story telling and story boarding. I just wanted to talk about my thoughts about story telling in general and how this lead into my story boarding project for a short video. I've had some fun experiences with story telling, I was always enthralled with stories as a kid. There's so many ways I consume story telling whether it's through movies like Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, video games like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (super excited for this one!) and books. As a kid, I loved bed time stories, I was obsessed with super heroes, definitely with Spider-Man, and I loved comic books. It's amusing to me the idea that I am credited on a graphic novel that you could actually still buy on the kindle store, a comic issue I made in middle school with my art class and my instructor then published it. Such a cool experience.
I tried thinking of other ways I consume or create stories. Then I finally realized as a music producer, basically every beat, idea, and song I make is this grandiose storyboard to invoke some feeling. I'll speak more on this a little later, but I basically thought about how I could tell a story about the life of a producer.
The Producer Community
The producer community can be seen in many ways, it's hard to explain the connotation of the term. It can be seen as a union of producers attempting to create better work conditions for producers, better pay, better recognition. They can also be seen as internet trolls, meme makers, lazy music producers etc.
One thing I am for sure, is that producers alike have similar experiences, and those experiences can be disheartening, anticipating, struggling with addiction, restless, unhealthy, and disappointing. In those experiences, there are hilarious stories, great learning opportunities, humility, collaboration, and all things we signed up for in the beginning.
It also is a show boat-y place, an insane amount of gate keeping of knowledge and opportunity, sometimes non-collaborative, and you often don't get second chances with a party. It's definitely not easy finding a relationship with music and work as an audio person. But this is definitely a story I wanted to tell, an individual so involved, he encapsulates so much of the most ridiculous aspects of a modern music producer.
My Storyboard
I knew immediately that I wanted to make a comedic, satirical parody about the life of an award winning music producer. It's going to be an interview, not from an official organization, but almost D.I.Y. like he's trying to promote himself, which is so relevant to some of these awful marketing techniques of music makers in general. The guy's name is "Stellar Song", just the worst of the worst, he truly thinks he's stellar.
I thought of so many scenarios of this guy, because I relate to so much of these scenarios. His electricity bill is high, because all of his equipment is on for long periods of time. He over-listens to his song, on loop all day, he's so impressed by his ability that he just keeps it on replay, he's obsessed. I can't lie, I've fallen victim to that too. This guy, no matter how highly he thinks of himself, he is reluctant to release a lot of music from himself, but he swears he is the best. Why do all of us producers feel like we are the best at it?
Some concepts that didn't make the storyboard were the fact that his equipment makes the temperature in his apartment rise, but he still doesn't turn it off. Song also makes an amazing beat, he swears it is the best beat he's ever made, and the DAW crashes, and he loses all of his work. Song doesn't want to master any of his recent beats, he is just addicted to starting something new. All of these scenarios, so ridiculous, but so common to producers.
Anyway, as ridiculous and unfamiliar this might be to some folks, I think this will make for a really creative short video on this topic. One of my inspirations are Orion Levine, a comedian in the Bay Area used to make these short films as 'The Life of Trying". Absolutely hilarious. I hope it turns out super funny and rewatchable.
If you'd love to support me and other artists from the Bay Area; Listen to music produced and engineered by Aux on Spotify here:
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