Soundcloud upload
As usual I uploaded to Soundcloud first. <shamelessly promoting link here>I used a copyright free picture of P.Ramlee himself holding a guitar, which I thought was exactly what my song was all about, guitar and the Malay language.
Music Video
While planning for the MV, I thought of the best way I could film both of us singing, but make it look casual and not formal-like. So, I just scrapped up the idea of driving and recording the whole thing in two takes.The first problem was the location, which had to be long enough for the whole length of the song, scenic and minimal traffic. "What's the best shot that best represents Penang?" I thought. Well, nothing screams Penang other than the two sea bridges bearing its name! So I worked out the trip from the island to the mainland using Bridge 2 and back again using Bridge 1 which works out to be some 50-60km worth. Location problem solved!
The second problem was the camera kit. Initially I thought of using my pocket camera, the same one used to film the "All on this farm" MV, but struggled with mounting it on the car windscreen. Fortunately, my girlfriend had this car dash cam, which flipping it 180 to face the passengers, made for a rather decent camera replacement. Problem solved!
The third problem was finding stand-ins for the air guitar strumming, which was kinda last minute drama plot event prior to the song start. So I enlisted my neighbours LCC and LCG to do the honourable job of stand-ins and air guitaring in the backseat of my car.
We ended up shooting the first take in the afternoon, about 4pm on the Bridge 2. As I always plan things with two reasons in mind, we took a detour off the final shoot to Frog Hill, near Kepala Batas. Apparently the place was said to resemble some place in China, though all I see is several abandoned mining pools of questionable coloured water.
After spending some time there, we shoot the final take on Bridge 1 at dusk, where this round, my neighbours decided to start looking left and right for the entirety of the song (much wow).
For this MV, I chose a old-timey edit to the song while alternating the takes between take 1 and take 2. Here, YouTube tutorials for Adobe Premiere Pro CC was my best friend. I also made use of the first jazz draft of the song as the credit roll music. The biggest surprise of the shoot was that the car dash cam live preview screen and the eventual video file was different in dimensions. Initially during setup, the live preview screen showed a wide angle capture, which obviously didn't crop my girlfriend and my face - unlike the final recorded file.
Oh well, screw car dash cams next time.
Final Product
Here's the final product <drumrolls>. Thanks for watching!PS. The Behind the Scenes is here
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