Frozen Territory
Music, direction, design and edit: Chapter3
Results
1:30full film, finished in 5K
81shots, every clip used once
20edits built and rejected before this one
5,359frames, cut to the beat
Screen time shot by me21%
Light footage I shot, under the generated shots100%
Soundtrack written and made by me100%
Views, first 14 daysNo figure yet. It fills in after the premiere.
Press and featuresNo figure yet.
Meetings and commissions it led toNo figure yet.
ROI: to come, once the first numbers exist.
The problem
I wanted a full music video for a track I wrote, with the look and pacing of a high-budget production, and no crew, no set and no budget. The film had to feel designed from the first frame to the last, not assembled.
How I solved it
- I wrote the track and the sound. The choir and vocal layer, the plane whoosh, the impacts and the melt were all made to the cut, timed to the shot list.
- I cut to the music, not over it. 145 BPM, every cut on the beat, and the final build speeds up with the drums, each cut shorter than the last.
- Real material underneath. Defocused light footage I shot myself runs under the whole film. Every subject was built and graded into one room, one violet palette.
- Designed, not decorated. Small telemetry graphics follow the subjects like instruments reading a rare material, and count the crystallisation.
- One idea per shot. All 74 clips are written out as a storyboard, so none appears twice.
The idea
Everything that grows turns to crystal. The dog, then the man, then a dancer, then the room itself. One slow transformation, and a build that accelerates until it breaks, ending in a rippling pyramid.
Credits
Creative Direction, Code, Concept, Videography, Music, Editing, Motion Graphics
by CHAPTER3