by A Naked Kiss
As a home recording artist, my budget for making music is rather low. Much more, I can’t afford to spend money on a music video. Therefore, I decided to mix several royalty free videos for A Naked Kiss’ first single Water Goes, Where Water Flows. I like the result very much, and believe it matches very well the spirit of the song.
In my opinion, a DIY approach for a music video not only saves money, but it also is an artistic expression that differs eminently from professional productions.
Royalty free usage
For the video, I used two images and three royalty free videos. While I created the pictures myself, I found the three videos on YouTube. When you search for “royalty free background video” you get a bunch of good videos in any possible length. Unfortunately about half of the result is not royalty free videos, but royalty free music.
It is vital that you read the license and what usage (personal, commercial) is allowed. As a musician yourself you know what it means to be fair to the creator of the content.
Video Editing
As an addict for open source software, I used the tool OpenShot. I’m sure there a lot of much better editing tools. But when it’s possible with OpenShot, then I guess most professional software has no problem to do the same.
I had to cut the videos, so they fit into the flow of the song, and I also did some fade ins and outs. But the main trick is to use the alpha channel. In my case, I found the option under properties/layout. That way, you can see through the different layers. You will have to try which percentage works the best; this is different for every video. The stack of the layers is also significant. It very much depends on the color of the backgrounds, so you might have to do some experimenting there.
Enjoy the video and let me know what you think of it.
bandcamp
soundcloud
youtube
spotify
itunes