Something New

Have you ever been asked to do something new?  Something you've never done before?  And said, Yes?  And then found that one thing leads to another?  Me too.  I know it doesn't always work out well, but sometimes it does.  But either way, you never come away from that kind of experience unchanged.  And that is the heroes journey.  Which brings me to the music video for Pockets.

I'm fortunate to have friends with whom I can share imperfect (in process) works of art.  I'd produced a single for my talented singer-songwriting daughter, Alison.  I then played it for my talented artist/animator friend, Mark.  He immediately fell in love with the song.  I was pleased, as any father (and record producer) would be.  Afterall, it was only a rough mix.  Then he said, "I want to make a music video."  Okay.  It's always nice to be wanted.  "Well, I'll have to ask Alison.  It's her song."  She liked the idea.  Snag:  none of us had ever made an a music video before.  We'd done plenty of similar stuff, but "similar" is not the same as "same".

The plan was I would get Mark a final audio mix, and then Mark would animate the story.  Somewhere in there he realized four minutes of animation is a lot of work in animation time.  It's like dog years.  So he asked for some live action footage of Alison singing the song.  And this is how one thing leads to another.

Alison and I thought of our neighbor and friend (and talented fashion photographer/cinematographer), Ty Mecham.  We asked him if he would be willing to shoot some footage of Alison across the street in the park.  He had some time that Saturday, so we went for it.

I'm going to skip the messy part, where it was beautiful but freezing cold on the day of the shoot.  Trying to figure out how to get the footage and the audio recording to line up.  How to splice the animation and live action footage together and transition between the two.  But as is so often the case with a group of people who want something to succeed:  they find solutions.

And with that long-winded preamble, I'm proud to introduce Alison Orton's Pockets with loving, charm-filled animation by Mark C. Lindsey, and lush, gorgeous footage by Ty Mecham.  And although it doesn't always turn out so well, I hope you're saying "yes" to something new.  I'll bet you'll be glad you did.

If you love Pockets, you can also get it on iTunes.

Happy Memorial Day!