FINISHED PRODUCT

I'm finally doneeeeeeee

Just finished the music video and I'm content with the result :) I also uploaded my finished EP, consisting of the newest song as well as the 5 others I made for this project, onto Bandcamp and Soundcloud. This was definitely a learning experience and for the first time I can say I'm fully pleased with and proud of my work in terms of the song itself -- and I guess the video too.

Google Drive link with digipak artwork and the music video file:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Fq2HNcqdtAXLNxKZOPEWP2Ah9A_dqlLm?usp=sharing

Music video upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXzRce8yyLI

Social media page: https://www.instagram.com/898v898/ & website: https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/

REVIEW!! WOW

My friend Tyler is pretty involved in the witch house / underground music scene (and makes music himself which is very good in my humble opinion) and he offered to review my track! I'm super grateful for his input and he wrote a really good piece that encompassed both my branding and the song itself, as well as hinting at future output. It's awesome to hear from someone who shares my passion for this scene and understands its unique approaches to marketing and aesthetics :) Here's a link to the post itself, but it's private on his Tumblr so I'm not sure if other people can see it, so I'll also paste the text. 

    VPVVVPV is a new music act coming out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their SoundCloud and Bandcamp hosts songs with a variety of genres, so far being Witch House, Ambient, Breakcore, and Footwork. The track in particular I’m here to discuss today is of the Witch House genre, the song’s titled ‘ABU GHRAIB.’ The name being a reference to the war crimes committed by the United States to detainees in the early stages of the Iraqi War. VPVVVPV mentions on the front page of their website; “VPVVVPV IS MADE IN AMERICA AND CALLING ATTENTION TO THE AWFUL CRIMES OCCURING AS A RESULT OF US OCCUPATION IN IRAQI PRISONS!”

    Now, onto the music. The song and whole aesthetic of VPVVVPV seems to invoke nostalgia in the listeners, whether that’s intentional or not is not up to me to decide but the website presentation (https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/), the haunting synths, the gifs that hang proudly on the website, all give the familiar feeling to 2000s teens of coming fresh off of craigslist and checking up on your favorite, probably considered weird by your friend group, niche music act. I’ve said enough about the vibe/aesthetic, the sound itself is, like stated before, very witch house-y. While my knowledge of witch house is extremely limited, I can see similarities to the style of sound that made groups such as CRIM3S and SALEM attract a cult fanbase. With the resurgence of witch house thanks to artists such as Sematary, the aforementioned SALEMs return in 2020, and a bunch of hungry, talented kids trying to make art inspired by the greats of the past, it’ll be interesting to see where VPVVVPV cements themselves in the current witch house landscape if they continue their journey in the sound. As I mentioned before, they have a plethora of genres already listed on their pages in the short time they’ve been active, so it’s hard to pinpoint what VPVVVPV will sound like going from here.

You can keep up with VPVVVPV and their future releases by clicking any of these links:

https://vpvvvpv.bandcamp.com/music

https://soundcloud.com/vpvvvpv

https://vpvvvpv.neocities.org/

https://www.instagram.com/898v898/

“- [ COMING SOON ] 'SERPENTINE DREAM THEORY’ Extended play 

- [ COMING SOON ] 'ABU GHRAIB’ MUSIC VIDEO”

WEBSITE REDESIGN

I mentioned a few posts back that I wanted to redesign the site to better reflect the kind of 2000s aesthetic I wanted to achieve with the branding. I've developed a pretty strong idea for the song I'm using for the video in that it's going to be surrounding the American invasion of Iraq because I've always found Bush era Internet aesthetics soooo so so interesting, and also I think that era is very captivating in and of itself so I'd like to feature it in my art.

Here it is !! Yay. Pretty happy with how it turned out, initially I wanted to incorporate a sidebar like I have on my main website but it was too annoying trying to line up the logo and everything. I think this simplistic layout works pretty well anyways since I'm not presenting much content on the site anyways. I linked to a separate page including links to all my released songs as well as the Instagram page, and I put a little announcement about cassettes and CDs going up on the Bandcamp page soon (which I will be making the designs for but not actually putting them up for purchase lol).

I almost kind of built up some lore about the artist? Like in the little copyright footer I transferred over from my main site I put the year as 2004 to match the song's theme. I'm also using some news footage from 2003-04 in the music video so I think it lines up well along with the dated design of the site?? I'm aware my branding is getting kind of silly but I think this is still pretty evocative of the witch house era and its DIY esotericism.

DIGIPAK RESEASRCH

I could take several routes with the digipak. The one that first comes to mind is a CD: it's definitely the most common and accessible form of physical music that I've seen be distributed by independent artists within this scene, including some of my own musician friends. Bigger projects have also distributed on vinyl, and some have even done cassette tapes. I'm really interested in that last option. Cassette designs are always so cool to me, and I feel like I could do something really nice with the art.

Here's a photo my friend (shoutout Alice) sent me of her Sematary CDs. They all seem to follow a similar format inside, with some kind of related alternate artwork following the theme of the front cover on the inner slip and behind the disc, and the disc itself either being a black and white version of the front cover, the cover itself (for RB1), or a single cover (HAW). I've seen the backs and they all follow similar themes as well, with more artwork following the theme and a tracklist / production credits. I really like how cohesive and thematically distinct these designs are and if I were to go with a CD I would also try to emulate my branding through the design choices in this way. I was also thinking about making a little booklet to put in the inner front slip, since this is a common feature for lots of physical media.

Sematary has also put out cassettes for two releases, Rainbow Bridge 2 and 3. These cassettes are similar in branding to the CDs and include additional special logos and designs to fit the cassette structure.

Here I'll put some more examples of cassette inspiration:

Left to right: Machine Girl - ...BECAUSE I'M YOUNG...,
Puzzle - Laying in the Sand, SALEM - STAY DOWN (DJ MIX)

ANOTHER NEW SONG SHIFTING PLANS AAAAGGHHH

Ok so. I know I had already planned on using StEllllsS for the music video BUT I came back to a song I did a few months ago called my adorable galloping cowboy blue butterfly (awesome name imo, gonna change it for the project however) and did some remastering / rearranging etc. And now I think I'm going to use this for the video instead. The other songs I actually did fully during the project will still be included on the full release / digipak but this song specifically will be used for the video and released only within the digipak instead of as a single like I did with the other songs if that makes sense.

There's a lot of stuff in FL that I haven't explored yet but this seems like a huge feature that I didn't notice at ALL until today and blew my mind because I always wondered how people automated pitch shifts for an entire song. Apparently there's a 'Master Pitch' knob next to the Master Volume !! which is really awesome because I was able to shift the song up and down a couple hundred semitones until I found something that had the right eerie weird quality I've been trying to find for so long. The bass came out soooo good in this remaster, and I also took out the CRIM3S-inspired choir chants I originally had because I just didn't think they fit that well in hindsight LOL. Really pleased with everything and I knowwww I need to actually start the video soon which I will do this weekend it's my number one mental note  blaaaarrggghhhh Been trying to scrape together motivation for the past few weeks and I think I can pull it off now *prayer hands*

WEBSITE AND OTHER INTERNET THINGS

I've made a website !!! fun

I love web design and I haven't worked on any coding in a while so this was cool. It gave me a chance to mess around with visuals more, reflecting the music with an aesthetic. I also have an official logo I guess; it's the main thing on the website and I think it looks cool having a huge logo and then super basic text and links. I was debating between this kind of minimalist look or something super maximalist that taps fully into 90s ghost-hunting / supernatural / metaphysical type websites, and honestly I think I might add that as a feature on the website that leads into the main page with the links? That would be a cool form of promotion. Also using the artist name (VPVVVPV) to represent some type of occult witchy thing which directly taps into witch house's themes while staying in a more specific niche through the website design. Thinking I could go in a more campy direction and really tap into those maximalist late 00s aspects of the genre. Now that I'm writing this I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do that actually so yay win fun

I also made a Bandcamp and Instagram page and started building a consistent aesthetic by matching the website / Soundcloud / Bandcamp in terms of visuals and colors. I released another song and promoted it on the Instagram as well as following people who I've already connected with in the scene, and I'm planning on continuing to build a brand / aesthetic through the Instagram based on the content posted by my main musical inspirations, such as SALEM's Jack Donoghue, whose social media isn't really based on promotion and direct references to his music but instead has an almost esoteric vibe. I feel like this in conjunction with a revamped website that matches that kind of esotericism would resonate a lot with the audience I'm looking for since my peers in the scene seem to like that kind of stuff.

SONG OPTION #4 - AMBIENT / NOISE

This one was super interesting to experiment with. I've listened to a variety of ambient and noise music and I've found that the stuff that intersects both genres is what I enjoy most. Artists like Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and lovesliescrushing create super interesting textures and atmospheres through their music, sounding almost angelic and revealing overtones / harmonies within different layers. 

VPVVVPV · lisca

For this track I recorded my guitar straight into my laptop microphone in order to get a dirtier sound, but most of the work went into adding effects and layering things. I used a looooooad of reverb to make the sound as open and echoey as possible in order to achieve that ambience and then added distortion for the noisier aspect. I also slowed down the stems to make things wider and more eerie which helped the ambience as well. I then layered the result over itself and messed around with even more effects, ending up with three layers that worked super well together to create a dreamy atmosphere with some rumbly noise textures which is pretty much exactly what I wanted !!!

The artwork process was pretty silly but also fun. I took a bunch of pictures of my hair and layered them, messing around with lighting and overlays to make this dreamy wash of color that I associate with ambient music. Turned out sick I think.

(Left to right: Sugar Wounds - Sugar Wounds, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma -

Love is a Stream, lovesliescrushing - xuvetyn,

t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 - 肉体からの離脱)

This was really fun to achieve and I'd like to make more stuff like this in the future for sure :P I don't think I'll be doing a video for it though because that would be quite boring, maybe at the very end in a big compilation of all 4 songs. 

SONG OPTION #3 - BREAKCORE

Breakcore is a genre that I've actually explored production with quite a bit. I'm pretty comfortable with chopping up drumloops and figuring out which effects work best, like flanger and delay in some parts to make things sound cooler. Also it's just insanely fun to produce.

VPVVVPV · ZZZZ21000

The song is based primarily around My Chemical Romance's 'The Ghost of You,' which I sped up to 210bpm in line with breakcore's usual tempo range as well as pitching it up quite a bit and messing around with sections. One of the most important steps is cutting out the lower frequencies of the sample with an equalizer so that the original drums are less audible over the breakbeats. I cut out some bits and reversed them (forgive my keysmash renaming LOL), layering them with other segments (especially the chorus) to create a pretty cool atmospheric effect. I also used gross beat, an effect that allows you to manipulate the timing of a stem and shift noises around basically. Gross beat is super useful in breakcore in my experience, especially paired with reverb and stereo delay to create complex textures. That little sample in the bottom left of the first image below is a kind of producer tag I guess? that I made with this super cool text-to-speech program. Fun fact: the same TTS program was used for the Wired voice in Serial Experiments: Lain :D

After messing with the sample a bit comes the obvious main component, drums. I have a hardcore breaks / jungle drumloop pack downloaded with a bunch of different breaks, and my usual process for breakcore involves choosing whatever sample has the best timbre / tonal qualities and then chopping it up to match the rhythm of the song sample. Messing around with rhythms and patterns is sooooo much fun to me, I love lining things up with the original song as well as flipping rhythms up through the drums. 

As for the cover art I kinda just came up with something I thought looked cool. I layered a US flag over a still from Tony Scott's Deja Vu and added a cool little old web US flag heart thing in the corner because breakcore has always had a connection to 2000s internet culture. There's not really a set look for breakcore cover art, but internet imagery is pretty pervasive. So yeah LOL I really like how this art turned out.

In terms of music videos, I don't think I've actually watched any breakcore stuff ,,, but since the visuals in general are internet- and anime-based, I guess I could do something like Machine Girl's DJ mix visuals.

Most of my breakcore stuff is very sample-based, as with a lot of the genre, this song included. Breakcore has evolved a LOT since its conception. It used to consist of IDM-adjacent super fast drill-and-bass type stuff with a dark aesthetic, but in the past decade or so its grown to be more adjacent with things like the nightcore and anime communities. I chose to sample an MCR song because they've been one of my favorite bands since elementary school and newer waves of breakcore tend to draw a lot from childhood nostalgia, hence the prevalence of nightcore, which was popular in the early 2010s. I've been into breakcore for around 4 years now, getting into it through Machine Girl, who I mentioned in the footwork post, but never thought about producing it myself until late last year. One of my favorite albums, which inspired me to get into producing breakcore on my own, is hsiu's you were beautiful when i loved you, you were beautiful when i lost you., which the creator has said is a very personal and sentimental sample-based project for them. Seeing someone transform music they love into something that sounds arguably even cooler was super inspiring, and I went for something similar here with my own flair :nerd: 

SONG OPTION #2 - FOOTWORK

Footwork is a genre I've wanted to experiment with for a while, but I never produced it myself until now.

VPVVVPV · 2step heaVn

The main component of footwork is the drums, so I started out by laying those out. Although some footwork has more complex kick patterns, I went for a 4-on-the-floor approach for most of the song that taps into the genre's deep house intersections (I also added some house-y open hats) and included a different 808 pattern later on that introduces some cool rhythmic textures. By far the most important part of footwork / juke / East Coast club is the little rimshot percussion patterns that basically guide the rhythm of the song. These usually consist of triplets and other fun stuff so I really enjoyed plotting mine out.

The melodic aspects of footwork are also quite simple, usually with some kind of short repeating vocal sample or house stabs / ambient pad synths depending on if you're leaning more into deep house or drum 'n' bass respectively. I went with the latter as well as using some one-shot vocal samples in a hardcore breaks sample pack I have, adding effects to make them echoey and cool sounding. I'm really happy with how this synth turned out, it just sounds so dreamy and creates a really nice environment.

I went for more of a dnb / breakbeat leaning track, adding some chopped up drumloops in the second half. I've experimented a bit with breakcore and I find chopping up drum samples like that so much fun, it's so rewarding creating different rhythms and textures with a pre-existing loop.

The process is pretty simple but the results always sound super cool, it's a really interesting genre with a vivid culture behind it. One of my main musical influences in general is SALEM, who themselves make witch house but still have ties to footwork and other similar subgenres from their origins in Traverse City, Michigan and Chicago. Jack Donoghue had a juke project called Young Cream and SALEM's DJ mix XXJFG has a bunch of juke songs that provide insight into the origins of footwork culture. One of my favorite albums, Early Victims by DJ Lucas, explores several East Coast club subgenres, including juke and footwork. Additionally, the songs 'Hell Na' by cakedog and some of WLFGRL by Machine Girl also opened me up to different possibilities within footwork, such as sampling and incorporating jungle breakbeats, the latter of which I included in my song :)

As for the cover art, a lot of the straight-up juke and club records I've seen go for a fuzzy black-and-white aesthetic that I find mirrors the music very well, so I went for a similar vibe here.

(Left to right: DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues, DJ Lucas - Early Victims,

Club Casualties - Club Causalities, SALEM - XXJFG)

I'm pretty happy with how this song turned out (one of my friends who's pretty into house music said he likes it. win!), but I don't think I'll be making a video for it. If I do, I would probably do something along the lines of Yabujin's songs like 'CHALICE OF MIND' and 'ZAOS DA JUMPING GARGOYLZ' that feature clips of people dancing in jumpstyle. Footwork is a very dance-based culture, so I think something like that would work.

SONG OPTION #1 - WITCH HOUSE

I've been working on four songs to figure out which one would be best to make a music video for. In the context of the project, all four songs would be included on the same EP which will be what I'm marketing and designing the digipak for later on. 

VPVVVPV · L1SBETH

The first of these four is a witch house song, this being the genre I have the most comfort and experience producing in. For music production I use the digital audio workspace (DAW) FL Studio 12 and have for some time, and the main synthesizer I use within FL is called Serum. Serum has some pretty sick presets for witch house including hoover synths and hypersaws as well as one called 'Rave' that works pretty well for lead melodies.

In this song I used a basic hypersaw at a lower octave for the main backing chords, layering the 'Rave' preset at some points (especially the chorus) an octave up to fill up space and create cool little harmonies that happen with these kinds of synths due to the different waves being played simultaneously. I also put flangers on both these synths (only slightly) because that adds to the witch-housey sound a lot, especially the harder, almost wave-inspired sound I went for on this song. For the lead that comes in during the chorus I used a hoover synth and made some tweaks to the envelope (basically note speed or how it fades in / out, hard to explain LOL) and the oscillators / sub-bass. 

In terms of how I built up / wrote the song, I started out by laying down the main chords with the hypersaw and rave hoover. Once I came up with a chord progression I liked, I did the drums. Drums have always been my favorite part of producing because witch house is so snare-heavy and you can create some really fun textures and rhythms by messing around with different one-shot samples. 

In this screencap the top pattern is the main drums; I start out with laying down kicks and then add in snare rolls and space out other rhythmic stuff. The bottom pattern is the hi-hats; I made these separate from the rest of the drumloop because being able to add and take out stems like that makes for a more dynamic and sonically interesting track. For example, no hi-hats during the first verse, hats come in during the chorus, sporadic hats during the second verse, hats full-force second chorus and then a sparse ending with only drums and the basic synth line at an even lower octave.

After all the stems are laid out and structured I go in with dynamic effect stuff like little love philter riffs that make the melody more interesting, as well as cutting out the volume when the synths cut out because hoovers have a tendency to make a very audible 'winding down' noise when they stop playing a note. Then comes the mixing process: I'm not super proficient in mixing, I usually just do what sounds good to me lol. I like making my kick drums really strong which results in this sick effect where it sounds like the synths are side-chained with the kicks, cutting out a bit with each hit. Like I said, I also add flangers and stuff to the synths but most of my mixing is just making sure nothing is clipping or too loud / quiet. 

Then comes artwork. This song was heavily inspired by stuff like CRIM3S and Sidewalks & Skeletons, even Crystal Castles to an extent that make up the noisy, heavy, EDM-ish side of witch house, but for the art I took some creative liberties and went for something that spanned the whole genre as opposed to that harder second wave. Some traits include vertical symmetry, lots of dark cool colors like purple and blue, crude image cutouts and editing, basic fonts, lots of triangles and other weird symbols, and a general thrown-together vibe that I tried emulating with the art for this song. 

(Left to right: RITUALZ - Ghetto Ass Witch, CRIM3S - CRIM3S,

Crystal Castles - Plague, Black Kray & Jayyeah - Back to the Witchhouse)

And yeah! That's pretty much it. I have a bunch of witch house videos in my music video inspiration playlist, and I think this might be the song I'm going with for the video because I have so much experience with WH visuals. But it's always good to experiment I guess :P

DISTROOOO

(note: I've added hyperlinks for specific examples, so make sure to hover over the text so you don't miss any)

The cool thing about working on a music project like this is that I've spent a good amount of time navigating small communities online that indulge in independent, Internet-based music. This has given me insight and experience over time for figuring out what works and what doesn't -- I have several friends who produce and release music online and I'm definitely going to be taking pointers from them. My distribution for the music itself will therefore be largely online, since I'm mostly aiming for that niche audience that uses the Internet to discover new music. There are several different routes I could take to take advantage of this, including streaming services as well as other forms of integration and post-release promotion. As for the music video itself I'll be posting it on Youtube and promoting it alongside the music itself upon release (I'll go deeper into this in the Soundcloud paragraph).

The main service I'll be looking at is Bandcamp, which has a reputation for hosting independent music, both for streaming and digital download purposes. Users can stream music for free or purchase projects from the artist directly, owning it as a download. I've bought multiple projects from some of my favorite independent artists on Bandcamp, and its provision of digital downloads has made my own personal digital music library much more expansive. Another cool thing about Bandcamp is its exploration and discovery, especially of smaller artists. I've found a few super interesting and underseen projects ranging different genres like breakcore (97997ALMONDS and hsiu) to skramz (Sugar Wounds and Gas Up Yr Hearse!) that I would never have found otherwise. I love being able to support these artists directly, it feels very personal and it's just cool being part of such a niche community. For these reasons I see Bandcamp as the most fitting distribution source for my product, especially if I'm sticking with an ambient / noise route.

My Bandcamp library, not including stuff I've downloaded for free.

Another great service for independent 'Internet music' (as my friends and I have lovingly dubbed the kind of silly music I listen to) is Soundcloud, which has always been a resource used predominantly by hip-hop-adjacent artists as well as different electronic stuff. My friends who produce all base their distribution primarily through Soundcloud, adding links to Bandcamp or Youtube releases in the description. A common technique used by Soundcloud-based artists is including **VIDEO IN DESCRIPTION** or some variation of it in a track title, the video in question usually being on Youtube. This is super commonplace and establishes a pretty much universally accepted bond between posting on Youtube and Soundcloud if you're making a music video. Soundcloud also provides digital downloads, for free this time, but is mostly streaming-focused. It's very accessible and ubiquitous with contemporary independent music, so I'll be posting there as well.

Although this isn't a streaming service, RateYourMusic is also an absolute must for navigating the Internet music sphere. I've found SO MANY of my favorite albums through this website, some of them super recent and some simply being forgotten indie projects from a few decades ago. Its userbase is very passionate about discovering new music, with the site's genre pages and list features making the sharing of new findings a fun and communal experience. Any user can add an artist or project to the database, making it findable to anyone. RYM would be a viable form of promotion after releasing my project, even if it doesn't gain too much traction. Also it's just cool having your music show up somewhere like that.

My RateYourMusic profile (shameless plug)

VISUALSSS

The major task for this project is not making the music itself, rather producing a music video for it. In class last year, we were taught that there are three general types of music videos: the performance, the narrative, and the concept. Usually, the first music video by an artist is the performance type, showcasing and promoting the artist as a figure and introducing them to possible audiences. This type, along with the narrative, is the most common, with the two often being combined as well. The narrative form follows a storyline that often matches the song's lyrics; the third, the concept, is the most abstract, not following a set narrative and taking a highly stylistic / 'artsy' approach. 

The concept video is not normally taken on as the first video for an artist, but I think I'll be taking that risk. Aside from the obvious hurdles of producing the video on my own, the abstract qualities of a concept video would likely be more fitting with the sound of my music. Some of my main stylistic inspirations musically also produce concept videos quite a bit, and it fits with their music really well, much more than a narrative or even performance would. Fuzzy layers of color melding with each other capture the soothing feeling of ambient music and more synth-based witch house, which is one of the main options I'm considering.

(left to right: CRIM3S - MEET ME HALF DEAD, Mount Eerie - Ocean Roar, White Ring - SHAKEN TO SLEEP)

However, there are also examples of performance videos combined with the stylized aspects of a concept. The examples I've seen of this kind usually feature the artist in front of a green screen performing the song with visuals and layering behind / in front of them. This style can work for a load of genres, and would likely be a good direction in terms of marketing since it resonates with the internet-based sensibilities of contemporary audiences. I'll probably be taking this route, depending on if the song I choose for the video is vocal-centered or not (probably not lol). Even still, I think it would be fun to experiment with layering and chroma keying techniques since it just looks so cool every time.

(left to right: Sematary - I HAIL THE NIGHT, Gods Wisdom & Mal Devisa - 2 Lives, Charli XCX - Claws, Crystal Castles - Baptism, Yung Lean - Hurt, YABUJIN - DEAR GATEKEEPER)

I think it's still too early on to start considering what exactly I'll be featuring in the music video, but it's good to look at these options and decide what music route I'm taking based on what's easier to execute. Full list of video inspiration here.

PORTFOLIO PROJECT INTRO!! MUSIC-MAKING FUN

(note: I've added hyperlinks for specific examples, so make sure to hover over the text so you don't miss any)

So I've known since the beginning of the schoolyear when we got introduced to this project that I wanted to go with the music route, producing a music video, social media account, and digipak. However, instead of working with a local artist, I wanted to make the music myself :0

I have a little experience with music production: I've made a few beats / instrumentals before ranging from early 2010s trap / drill to witch house to various other silly things but was never very satisfied with them. I also really like remixing songs by adding chopped-up breakbeats and speeding the song up and adding effects like reverb and gross beat and 10000 layers of delay / flanger / other nonsense (linking an example here, sorry about the mediafire link LOL, I tried embedding it in a little miniplayer but blogger hates me and doesn't allow mp3 embeds anymore I guess??).

I've also been interested in exploring noise music, either softer ambient stuff like lovesliescrushing that bridges into shoegaze / dream pop, or what "most" (relatively, we're talking about a pretty niche community here methinks) people consider noise - i.e. power electronics or prepared guitar stuff. 

I'd like to find a happy medium among all the genres I listed, which I think is pretty achievable considering I've heard similar stuff that combines witch house / early drill / black metal, noise / experimental hip hop, and trance / breakcore to name a few. My main concern is making something substantive that doesn't rely too heavily on trying to emanate my inspirations. I also don't want to fall back completely on using pastiche and pre-existing material (although some of those inspirations do that quite a bit). Since I only technically need to produce one full song for the portfolio project in order to make the music video I'm not too worried about trying to combine all those broad influences and go into a full creative effort, but if I have time I'd definitely like to :)

I've already assembled a playlist of some inspirations which I'll link to here, and I'm looking into possible music video styles that I can feasibly recreate and experiment with. I also have to start thinking about the social media aspect but I think I should be able to do that without much effort. Since I'm going for a more explicitly independent thing than the project assumes most people will take for this option I'm definitely gonna have to be creative with how I build my image and get my music around, but I'm involved enough in these kind of niche subgenre-centered spaces that I think I can figure things out.

POSTMODERNISM IS EPIC LULZ!!!

I've been wanting to go into film studies at a higher level for a few years now, so I was very happy to begin doing so this year in A-level. The entire postmodernism unit we did was very fulfilling for me. While reading the theories of Baudrillard, Jameson, and Hutcheon, I kept thinking back to some of my favorite films, finally having proper terminology to put into analyses I had made during prior watches. Postmodernism felt like the perfect movement for me to study, especially since I got the chance to write about one of my favorite films ever, Resident Evil: Retribution, in the context of postmodern theory for our A-level midterm. 

The negative mainstream reception of and around the Resident Evil films honestly makes me sad because of how perfect they are as examples of postmodernism, especially in our contemporary postmodernist age with a growing interest in VR and full immersion in digital spaces. I feel that looking at these films through that lens specifically could lead to a much-needed critical reappraisal, and I'm really glad I was able to offer my take on this in my midterm essay. The whole postmodernism unit and that case study also got me thinking about how many 21st century films should be reappraised in this way. There's an abundance of cinema from the past 25 years that is rife with the anticapitalist commentaries and hyperreal digital atmospheres theorized by the postmodernists, critically and commercially shunned and written off as overindulgent, insubstantial vulgarities.

Some of my favorite examples are Michael Mann's Miami Vice and Christopher Nolan's Tenet, both of which have received criticism for unintelligible dialogue and being style-over-substance pieces with an air of pretentiousness and egoism. Both of these films indulge in their maximalist atmospheres and subvert action conventions while simultaneously holding true to them, taking everything to the furthest extent possible. The former oversaturates the style and campiness of the source material and lives in a perpetual state of aesthetics and opulence, akin to the similarly reviled Showgirls (1995) and Psycho (1998). It uses pastiche in a way that is upheld and advanced by Mann's manipulation of the buddy-cop/noir paradigm: almost twofold what he had already achieved in 1995's Heat. Tenet is almost self-parodying in its incomprehensible plot and time-warp motif. Nolan takes what he is known for -- definitively postmodern pieces that deal with simulacra and human emotion expressed through layers of hyperreality -- and throws sensibility to the wind. Dialogue offering a bombardment of exposition (barely audible at times, the sound design feels purposely disruptive; this was meant to be viewed in a theatre) with a slow-moving and indiscernible plot that leaves the viewer stranded, near-drowning. Nolan's reputation for confusing, "meta" films allows him to indulge in postmodernist traits to such a high level without the restraints of genre or expectation: thus is the fate of the vulgar auteur.

Seems like I went on a tangent there. Oopsies! But my point is, this unit gave me the tools and outlet to further express my ideas on film and other media I consume. I'm more excited than ever to go to college for film studies, maybe even pursue this as a career :D

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE SUMMER (WINTER?) OF AUREA

New year, new blog. I am so excited!

This year in A Level we worked on a film distribution project, in which we received a short story written by creative writing students and were challenged to plan a film adaptation of it, complete with trailers and a distribution plan. My group was assigned a story based on the game Among Us, which would've been pretty awesome a year ago when Among Us still had meme status. This was just stale. Putting the less-than-ideal subject matter aside, the project still didn't exactly work out. BOO! HISS!

My group got the initial idea figured out and we worked on researching films in the same vein -- 80s scifi-horror-comedy revival -- such as Malignant and Cabin in the Woods. I also had in mind Possessor and Scream as well as the original 80s inspirations like Evil Dead, the Thing, Alien, and the Fly. The research was fun: I love movies, and it's always cool finding out behind-the-scenes stuff like marketing and distribution specifics. Fleshing out the aesthetics for our film was my favorite part, I love brainstorming stuff like that and the concept we were working with seemed perfect for that kind of pastiche overindulgent FUN that doesn't take itself too seriously.

The research went smoothly, but this is when problems arose. I took a week off school because I got sick with a cold (EPIC FAIL) and then another week off for my mental health (EPIC WIN). One of my group members was also quarantined during this time, so we weren't able to actually film or produce anything. We were left with just the slideshow presentation and the key art, which isn't the worst case possible I guess. I just would've really loved to make those ideas come to life, especially something that seemed so fun to create. But the situation just wasn't in our favor. 

I definitely could've handled Rodrigo and I's absences better: more communication and planning, etc. Circumstances were messy all around. Next time I'll be sure not to let that happen! I'm also going to be working on the portfolio project by myself (trollface) but hopefully that'll turn out better than this. I find working in groups can be difficult for me because it's hard to arrange everything with everyone staying on the same page and contributing the same amount of time/effort (which is fine!), so working on my own terms should be easier to handle.