choosing a song

Time to choose a song! I've decided to start out with one of this week's smaller tasks to ease myself into the work. Plus, I need to chose it soon if I want to get the rights to use it. I also figured that I should choose my song before making the storyboard since the first 50 seconds or so of my opening will center around the song. By this I mean that I want the movements of my main character to sync up with the music while she's painting. In order to achieve this I need a song that includes and accentuated rhythm and percussion instruments. In addition, I want the tone to be somewhat upbeat to reflect the main character's love for painting but not too energetic. Oh, and I want to avoid songs with bold vocals because they might take attention away from what's happening on screen. I think the indie pop or indie rock genre is a good place to look for songs with those qualities, especially those from the early 2000s, so I'll be starting off with musicians like Ariel Pink, Animal Collective, etc. I actually have a playlist with these sorts of songs called "Vibe On✌" on Spotify so I'll start looking there.

Click Here for the link!

Listening....

Listening....

Still listening....

Okay I'm done! After listening to all the songs (I skipped past a lot of them after hearing the first 20 seconds) I've narrowed it down to two: Winter Love by Animal Collective and Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear. They both have fast timing, use percussion instruments, and don't have extremely dominating vocals but Two Weeks is more upbeat than Winter Love. So those are some options but I have to keep looking. Right now I'm going to check out Radiohead and Vampire Weekend so I'll get back to you when I'm done.

...done!
So, Radiohead isn't that big on upbeat music. I knew that going in but I also knew their songs fit a lot of other qualities I wanted so I tried it out anyways but quickly realized that it was a dead end. Vampire Weekend, however, was the complete opposite. I had no problem finding upbeat songs from their 2008 self-titled album. The best song was probably Campus so I'll had that to the list of candidates. Just to recap, the final songs to choose from are Campus by Vampire Weekend, Winter Love by Animal Collective and Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear. I'll have to sleep on it for now but I'll save this as a draft and come back later.

Hello! It's the next day (2/26) and I've made my final choice. The official song is, drum roll please,......Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear! In the end, I think this song was the perfect balance for me. Winter Love didn't have any real change of pace or rhythm until two minutes in but I didn't care for anything after that because it didn't fit the tone I was going for. The first two minutes of the song are too passive and it feels like it's on a loop which doesn't allow me to do that much with the camera movement and choreography of the actress's movement. Campus, on the other hand, had more flair than I wanted and percussion instruments that felt like too much too fast. So, I opted for Two Weeks, which hit a sweet spot. I can actually visualize the scene when I play the song so I feel like that's a good sign. That's all for today but next time I'll probably have more storyboard in the works. See you then!