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Shine Through - MP3!
🕑 Added 2021-09-27 14:43:38 +0000 UTCRemember how in a previous post I said how 'Room for Improvement' was a rare example of a project that was spontaneous and didn't have the luxury of lots of time for pre-production? Well good(?) things come in pairs I guess!
When Square Enix reached out to me to make a music video for them it broke my heart, but I had to turn them down. I was in the middle of moving house, everything I owned was in boxes and I was just days from loading all of those boxes in to a van. But not only that, we were just a couple of weeks from the game releasing and understandably they wanted something that could release alongside it.
So with a heavy heart I thanked them for reaching out and told them that there was no way I could make them something in time.
Well apparently Square Enix were SUPER keen to work with me because they came back and offered me two extra weeks!
Which, don't get me wrong, was still an incredibly tight turnaround but it was doable. It just needed to be something that needed minimal pre and post production work. No storyboards, no VFX, nada. Well as luck would have it Life is Strange lends itself perfectly to a shoot on location, out in nature, which was something I'd never really tried before and was keen to explore. (The local park dressed as a goose doesn't quite count!)
Honestly I think the stars aligned for me for this project. One of my closest childhood friends, Paul, is an accomplished cinematographer and director, lives near a mountain range, is a licensed drone pilot and happened to have an exactly music video shoot length gap in his schedule at exactly the time I needed it. Without him this project just wouldn't have been possible and I owe him a huge debt. (I also now owe him money because that's how these things work.)
I really wanted to explore the themes of human connection with this piece. In the game Alex has spent her life keeping herself isolated, afraid of connecting with others, and through the events of the game has to learn to connect with others. I think that on some level we can all relate to that feeling.
The spoken word outro wasn't originally part of the plan at all. One morning when Oxygen sent me a new draft of the instrumentation he said words to the affect of:
'So I got a little carried away with the outro... It's a minute long. Should I get rid of it?'
He wasn't joking, he'd made this wonderful ambient soundscape outro to the song but it was a full minute long. It didn't have a beat so I couldn't extend the lyrics over it with a repeated chorus or anything. It was far too nice to simply remove it but it needed something, if nothing else than because what do I fill a minute of music video with with no words?
So I decided to try my hand at some spoken word poetry. I don't write poetry too often but I do enjoy it. The outro to Shine Through was a little tribute to one of my favourite poets Shane Koyczan, who releases his work set to wonderful semi-ambient music with his group 'The Short Story Long' and if you enjoyed my little outro here I really suggest you check them out. ('Shoulders' and 'For Many' are two personal favourites.)
It's always a little nerve racking releasing songs like this one. Emotional content walks a fine line between coming off as sincere and coming off as just plain cheesy. I'm really grateful that so many people have taken this song to heart because that's where I wrote it from. <3
Comments
Belle
I was just re-listening to this song, and the amount of emotion and messages in the song is truly heart warming. The amount of passion and emotion The Stupendium puts into their songs is insane, and this song is a great example of that. The music video is beautiful and colourful, and just what I'd envision it as. The motivating messages in this song is really just outstanding and can really touch your heart. I also am in love with the makeup.
Skullzi (Dez)
This song is so beautiful. I cried the first time I saw the video. Everything about it is lovely. And I want to play the game, as I am an empathic person an think I would love the story. This is possibly my favorite song you've ever done. Fragments is up there, too.
Kaedon Agronox
This song is the reason I became a patron. I lost my best friend Justin, just over a year ago to ALS. Having ALS made it impossible for us to game together anymore but he loved to play Life is Strange. This brilliant song you wrote made a complete mess of me, not just sadness but absolute joy and appreciation of the time Justin and I were fortunate enough to share. I cannot explain how much this song means to me. I do like everything else you do and have been listening for a long time but this one sent me over the edge, I had to contribute directly.
Candy Kane
As a child I remember my teacher asking us to pick a favorite color. I said rainbow. Teacher told me to choose an actual color. That stuck with me. It became more then just a question as I went through school and into life. I never quite fit the 'normal' of things. As I've gotten older the more I realize that fitting in isn't worth hiding my true self even if it means I'm a rainbow chaos eyesore to what is considered normal. So be it. If my chaotic eyesore of who I am helps someone even just a little bit to have the courage to also find and be themselves then it's all worth it. Because of that I am too someone who feels a strong connection to the imagery of the song.
Dale Bristow
So this song about the power of friendship was created with the power of friendship. Wow, life is strange indeed. This song's message actually heavily reminds me of Lights on a Truck and heavily aligns with my own worldview in a way that I've never seen in any other song; a worldview that I've built up to defeat years of anxiety and 'depression' and it feels affirming in a way.
Spider Perry
This is, in all sincerity, the song that made both me and my wife become patrons. I'd often been like "oh I should do that" bc 'babes, new Stupendium song' has been kind of an Event since our daughter introduced my partners and I to The Fine Print. But this? As I've said other places, I was in the middle of working on Shabbat dinner last Friday & "oh cool new song, I'll put it on while I'm cutting up brussel sprouts and prepping the salmon" and then I hit the family tree lines and suddenly my queer ass is just sobbing in the kitchen. So uh. The song's ok, I guess.
Chris Quesenberry
The new song is wonderful. It has a really catchy chorus and, as always, your word play is extremely witty with some very inventive turns of phrase. I feel like you threaded the needle when it came to walking that tightrope of emotion on the lyrics and I loved the use of color throughout the shoot. You and your compatriots did an amazing job in such a short span.
