The Process: Legion of Bokor - #Digital_Life. Music Video

The Process: Legion of Bokor – #Digital_Life
Music Video

All starts with the song and the lyrics, paying attention to the theme, tempo and interesting audio moments.

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the lyrics:

Digital Life

Nowadays everything is digitalized
It’s all public, there’s no place to hide
Use a credit card or a mobile phone
And let your apps know where you have been gone
Ask Dr. Google ‘bout insanity
And have a chatroom with your family
Buy some useless stuff on Amazon
And tell Mr. Zuckerberg that there is no one home

It’s not unreal
It’s just your digital life
And when you die
Your profiles will survive

I like you on Facebook, on Twitter, on Snapchat, on YouTube
On WhatsApp, on Instagram, yeah even on Google+
I like you on Tinder, on Periscope, on MySpace and on Foursquare, but
Most of all I like your private YouPorn site

Post selfies to ensure your immortality
Use hashtags to arrange your world properly
Obey your influencers to be really hot
Buy the stuff they sell, whether you need it or not
Follow beauty tutorials for lots of fun
Make your own and upload them for everyone
Show us what you look like when you’re working out
Of that body of yours, you can be really proud

It’s not unreal
It’s just your digital life
And when you die
Your profiles will survive

It’s not unreal
It’s just your digital life
Now you can die
‘Cause your profiles will survive

I’m a follower!
Will you follow me too?

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Then comes the band itself.

The looks, the personality and the vibe.

Looking for the cool stuff I could use.

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Input from the band.
The main story and other elements were provided by the band beforehand.
My task was to add some more elements, combine it all and put my spin on it.

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bring it on!

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I wanted cuts, lots of them.
And since Boundary’s City of Madness, I knew it’s possible.
As before, my proof of concept was other music videos.

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I knew that there gonna be a lot of cuts, so I made a chart in excel to see the flow of the song and to calculate how much footage we need.
I usually make such charts on a piece of paper, but in this case, I had to know exactly.

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With the help of the chart, based on everything, after another overconsumption of coffee, listening to the song on the loop until brain melt and typical blood sacrifice, the script was developed.

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The band gives a green light.

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The pre-production begins.
People, locations, equipment.
Meetings, scheduling, booking etc.

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Equipment

Camera, lights, smoke machine, food etc.

I had to find blueish Walkman player, blue headphones and a webcam on the second-hand market.
The laptop was my oldie.
They had to be blueish because at that point I already knew who’s gonna be playing “the girl”, so it all would match colour-wise.

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Locations

We needed two production days.
1 day for shooting the band.
1 day for shooting the story.

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Day 1

We shot the band at Szene Wien.

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Day 2

The next day we shot the story at Studio 35mm.
I took a look at the studio one week before.
The original room was too small for us and so we took a bigger space at the studio.
I took notes and made a floor plan.

I wrote a shot list based on the script and the location.
I put the shots in the order that would need the least amount of change between scenes, taking into account wardrobe and make-up change; background and light change.

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People

The Band

The Actress

The Director

The Director of Photography

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In the beginning, I wanted to use real social media screens as if it’s a screencast. But it would look dated in a couple of months because the design of social media platforms would change from time to time.

Then I wanted to use the logos of the platforms. But also, same reason, the platforms could disappear themselves.

So I made my representation of a universal social-media-platform-“like”-system.

It’s based on the idea that “likes” are similar to fuel.