“Full Body Freakout” Lyric Video

[youtube id=”H6rfaQix2GI”]Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, life has really changed for me. Although many other people lost work, my business actually grew. My wife had to take a few months off, so I also had more time to complete household projects. Obviously, the most relevant change to this blog was that the band decided to play it safe and not rehearse together. We do keep up with each other via text regularly, and bounce ideas around. During this time, I have been sharpening my video editing skills. We decided that a great way to keep our name out there would be to put out some lyric video content. Between my regular graphic design work and home improvement, I edited the video for “Full Body Freakout”.

Lyric video production diary

Initially, I envisioned a visual interpretation of each verse and chorus throughout the song. However, after plotting everything out, I decided that the concept was too literal. I didn’t want it to enter the cheesy territory of that awful Eve 6 video with the girl putting dude’s actual heart in a blender. Super cringe. Instead, I settled on mixing typography effects and animations to achieve a more balanced feel.

I was also concerned about coming off too heavy handed with the song’s message. Most of our songs are not political, but this one is. I wrote it as a frustrated reaction to the 2016 US Presidential election results. As such, I included imagery in the lyric video symbolizing the Trump regime sinking the USA underwater as the American flag fades to grey. While I included a simplified image of Trump Tower rising, I committed not to depict The Donald’s face anywhere in the video. Honestly, after living through four years of him dominating every news headline, I was seriously sick of seeing the guy.

The song’s verses mix subtle icons and simple animations with a single serif font. To round out the rest of the music video, I edited together some footage of us playing in our practice space. I separated the color channels to give it a lo-fi analog feel, and played with speeding up, slowing down, and reversing the footage to spice things up. Then, I added a mixture of glitch effects to the words as they transitioned. Finally, for the end of the video, I reversed the imploding Earth animation I used in the chorus. At last, the long national nightmare is over, as promised in the ending lyrics.

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