Free! -Part 3 Making the Video
Hello everyone to another blog! In Monday's blog and yesterday's blog, I wrote about the backstories of how I wrote my song, "Free". Today's blog is going to be about how I put together the YouTube video for this song in August. Make sure you check out that video and please consider buying the sheet music for it.
So I've mentioned before in my blog about making the video for Sunlight Coming that I've got this thing that I call the camera itch. It means that whenever I'm around something that I think would be perfect for a certain music video I quickly grab my phone and start filming! For this song, that usually meant that I'd be filming green mountains or blue skies outside my car window while traveling with my family. I don't live near the ocean, so it was hard to truly recapture my experience in New Zealand. But there's a beautiful river that passes through my town
Sometimes my neighbors and friends meet together early in the morning to see the sun rise over the mountain. Usually I decide to sleep in and get more sleep instead of watching the sun rise. But one time last year, the summer of 2021, I decided to join them and film the sun coming over the mountain. I wanted to get footage for the line, "when day comes, the sun will shine so bright". I got some good shots and managed to not get blinded by the light. I also took a few videos of the river below us when the sun was getting a little higher.
Just after I took those videos, my friends were thinking of hiking down to the river to swing on the rope of a tree swing on the other side. I agreed to come along. This is when the camera itch came into play. Right as we got to the river, I was taken away by the beauty of everything around me. I had never been by the river that early in the morning, and the sun was hitting the river at a perfect angle. I just had to take more videos! So by the time we were on the other side of the river, I was so full of the camera itch that I took a video of every person who swung on the tree swing. Later on, after uploading my first video, I asked them for permission to use those cool videos for my YouTube video of the song, "Free". I'm so glad that they said yes! The chorus of the third verse is my favorite part of the video to watch over and over again!
Since I had decided to use those videos, I thought that this summer I might as well do recordings of myself on the tree swing. Conveniently for me, there was a bridge that was recently completed which crossed the river right next to the tree! I didn't have to worry about crossing the river by myself with my equipment. I could just cross the bridge! However, I soon found that swinging on that rope is harder than it looks. The moment in the video that I looked like I had gotten dizzy and the other shot where I was resting against the tree was not acting! It was a very dizzying experience and I kept getting scared that I would lose my grip and fall on the sand or the river! Thankfully I didn't. That experience made the videos of my friends swinging and looking awesome so much more inspiring!
Here are also a few fun details I'd like to mention from my filming experience:
The pretty islander skirt that I wear while playing piano and looking at my pictures was a gift to me from one of my fellow sister missionaries during my mission in New Zealand.
The blue plaid dress that I wear in my music video, Peanut Butter and Jam, is from that same sister missionary.
The pictures I look at in the third verse are legit pictures that I took while in New Zealand. I didn't realize it while editing, but in hindsight I thought it was funny that I showed the picture of the sea right as I'm singing the words, "and you'll see".
I think that uploading the video for this song at the end of August was perfect timing. The Fall semester was starting up for other people and, like I said earlier, I had just graduated. But though I've recently ended a 4 year long adventure, I'm starting new adventures now!
I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please check out my videos, sheet music, and please consider donating to my website.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this blog. Now go enjoy your next adventure!
