Nervous Heartbeat: a homemade pop video

[imomus]

Back in February I offered you the first taste of the forthcoming Momus album Ocky Milk in the form of Frilly Military: a homemade pop video. Today I'm delighted to offer you another -- my own video for the song "Nervous Heartbeat". Click the picture to watch it on YouTube.



The song's lyrics are based on Japanese onomatopoeia, the colourful Japanese phrases which express something like an emotion by copying its "sound" -- even if it doesn't technically have one. (What's the sound of a painful condition? Zuki zuki. A glittering spakle? Why, pika pika of course!). You could see the song as an ultra-emotional way of learning a language.

The video shows a sequence of people I happened to meet in New York in April. I asked them to look sad, but the atmosphere of the song is perhaps best described as sensual, full of mono no aware (the "sigh-ness" of things) and natsukashii, nostalgia, or the longing for that which has never been. Nostalgia for an absent person, perhaps, or one you haven't met yet.

Speaking of love and couples, the article you helped me with last week, The Kinsey of Clicking, is now up on Wired News. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Comments

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

That is a real piece of beauty there, momus, especially the searchlights and that giant tree. Where is it from anyway?

By the way, if you like you can check my own musicvideo for the song Micke Hatar Stellan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwfayaxK8dE).

(What program do you use for your homemade movies anyway? Quicktime?)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The lit tree was just something I saw on Lafayette Street, NY one evening. I filmed it with the video in mind, because I immediately recognized some quality of searching in the scene, of searing beauty.

Your video certainly woke up my rabbit! It must have been all the high-pitched noises. I know you were deliberately going for a block, pixelated look, but if you want your videos to look smoother on YouTube you should upload them at 320x240 pixels.

I use iMovie, then I resample with ReelBean to get the right dimensions and file format.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, I know it came out very pixelated, but I edited the movie at school and it was my teacher who did the compressing and it turned out he compressed it to 59 meg while youtube only needs to have it compressed to about 100 meg or smaller.

I hope your rabbit liked the song and not only the hig pitched noises(coming from a mousing which I found a link to through one of your old daily photos!).

iMovie... Curse it! I don't have Mac...