It’s a Wonderful Day! -Making the Video

Hello again to my blog! So these last two days have been blogs about my original song, "It's a Wonderful Day!" And guess what? Today's blog is also going to be about that song. I've shared the backstory of writing the song and my experience of writing polyrhythms in the piano accompaniment for it. But I still haven't gotten the chance to share with you the best part of this story- making the video! It was so much fun!

The last thing in this story that I mentioned in yesterday's blog was that I had been writing the accompaniment for this song for my composition class, and I finished it just before the last week of June. So I decided that it was going to be the song for my June video. Since I had just barely completed the piano part, I asked a friend who plays piano to accompany me as I sang the song. Another friend of mine offered to help me out by taking videos so that I didn't need to worry about moving my tripod around. On the Saturday before the last week of June we planned to meet up with my accompanist to record the performance of the song before she would leave town in a couple days. Then my friend and I would go out and do additional videos. Everything was going to work out perfectly! At least I thought it would…

The pianist had forgotten that she had a family reunion on Saturday. Now the only time she had available before she would leave was on the Monday morning before June would end. My friend who was going to take videos of me in other places had a totally opposite situation. She would be out of town all of Monday, but was still free on Saturday. So we filmed the fun, silly videos before I got the recording of the song with my pianist. If it seemed like my dancing was awkward at all, it was because I didn't have any music to dance to except for the music in my head! 🤣

It was really fun to record videos with my friend. Along with dancing to no music, I had fun laughing at my mistakes, skipping around, and improvising quite a bit. There were two lines that I thought would be a bit difficult to get a video of, but they ended up genuinely happening! The first line was, "I'll keep laughing". There was a moment that I messed up, thought that she had stopped the video, and laughed after realizing that she had started recording again. That video is definitely going in my blooper reel that I'll be uploading at the end of the year. Stay tuned for that when it comes out!

The other line was, "and even if I fall". There was another video where I had been planning on running across the grass past my friend holding the camera. Just after I had passed her, I realized that she was still filming me. So I decided to turn around and run backwards for a moment, looking back at the camera. That was a big mistake. I tripped over myself and fell on the grass! Thankfully, I didn't hurt myself and that footage was exactly what I needed for the third verse!

Right next to the field of grass and the walkway under the shade of trees was a playground. My friend suggested that I could go down one of the slides, and I agreed that it would be fun! She pointed to the slide that she thought I should go down, and I once again agreed with her. It wasn't until I went down the slide that I realized how tall and steep it was! I was startled and yelled out "WOAH!" But though it scared me for a moment, it was so fun to go down that slide!

Later on we left the park and filmed at a dead end street that led to a bunch of rocks and sand. My friend thought that this could be another good place to film, but I wasn't as confident as her this time. If I fell down this time, it would be a much more painful experience! Thankfully, I didn't trip or fall and I got a couple more videos of me skipping and dancing to no music.

On Monday it wasn't too complicated to get a performance recorded with my accompanist. We had to record it more than once though because I had forgotten to press the record button on one device. Then halfway through another recording the camera that was by my accompanist (which is an older camera) turned off! Ugh technology. Sometimes it's a gift, sometimes it's a curse.

But once I got all my recordings done, I started editing them on Shotcut. I was really surprised to find out that most of the videos my friend took of me matched up with the music even though I didn't have any music to listen to while recording them! It was also just so much fun to watch myself act so goofy! Unlike my previous videos, I couldn't help but keep watching the video over and over again and smiling at myself while editing this video. It brought me so much joy, and I hope it has done the same for you as you've watched it on YouTube! After all, the song and the video are a reminder that we can have wonderful days, even if nothing is going our way. 🙂

I hope you enjoyed yet another blog about this song and the video that goes with it. It was so much fun to put it all together. Don't worry, I'll move on to another topic tomorrow! Please remember and feel free to watch my YouTube videos, consider buying the sheet music to my original compositions, and/or donate to my website. Comment below on when was the last time that you saw an adult slide down a playground slide! (Not including me, of course!)

Thanks for reading my blog all the way to the end.