ABOUT

The brief was to create a lyric video for the song "Daffodil Lament" using the home video footage of the band provided and they wanted it framed in a 90s TV. As it is a 6-minute song, the video has to keep the fans attention so this made me think about ways how I would do that visually. I also have to consider that this lyric video is a tribute to the singer Dolores O'Riordan who passed away in 2018.

When working on the visual storyboard and listening to the song on repeat, I had the idea that the video would be set in a dingy room with the TV on a stand and The Cranberries poster on the wall. With this, there would be scope for me to do a lot of camera movements around the scene and lighting to keep the video interesting. As I kept listening to the song, I have noticed there is a change in tone and sound midway (on the 3:21 mark) so that made me think something has to happen in the video when the music changes.

In regards of the song, I had to research what it was about and the meaning. In the first part of the song, it is about a relationship with someone that doesn't seem like it's getting anywhere. Then at 3:21, she decided to leave the relationship and started to realise it was the right decision. However there is still an undertone that she still isn't at peace with her decision which explains the eerie ending of the song.

Visually, the lighting of the scene plays a big part of showing the sad (dark) and happy (light) part of the song. And also the paper daffodils (ironic) growing out of the floor which would really grab the fans attention and pays hommage to the song title.

The client picked my storyboard out of all the submissions and they were happy for me to proceed with updates.

So in short, the final to-do list for this project:
1. Complete edit of the home video footage (which was 45mins long) to the duration of the song. This involves cutting short clips of the entire footage and then rearranging them where's best to accompany the song.
2. Refine 3D scene in Cinema4d (as I modelled it for the storyboard pitch).
3. Create the paper daffodil assets on photoshop and transfer to Cinema4D to experiment and achieve the desired animation of them.
4. Set up and animate cameras in the scene and render each scene out.
5. Animate lyric text on designated scenes on After Effects.

The handwritten typeface chosen for the lyrics was to match the singer's handwriting which I received an actual scan of her handwriting that had the Daffodil Lament lyrics written. After a good search, I found the perfect handwritten typeface that looked natural and legible. After all the 3D and camera work, animating the lyrics was a fun job. Especially when the lyrics go out of the TV.

In total, I spent about 80 hours on this project and was really one of the highlights of 2020.

Also reading the YouTube comments on the video makes me happy :-)