The Wandering Musicphile presents: Our Ceasing Voice

Many people express their passions in different ways. For music, however, someone with an intense passion has a tendency to end up playing an instrument. It has been long since I played one (piano), but my passion in music is still strong. It's probably stronger than it ever was. And because of this insatiable desire, I've had some amazing experiences. But nothing, up to this point, could really satisfy. I needed to do exactly what musicians do with their passion. I needed to create something.

I do not play an instrument, nor do I desire to get back into playing one. I work in video post-production. This is my expression of my passion in music through what I'm good at.

The Wandering Musicphile Presents...

Our Ceasing Voice

A little back story behind the project:
I've gone great lengths in trying to find ways to appease my passion in music. But when the day is done, I feel like I've only scratched the surface. One day an idea hit me, why not use my skills in video post-production toward my passion? "Music videos," came to mind. I made my first video for the Hungarian band, Marionette ID. It was a pre-album release video for Alluvion. I loved working on that. But I wanted to do something... different. That is when I realized that I should add my travel into the mix. "Make a video of musicians as not just musicians but as people, someone that we all can relate to. And capture them in their own home town." I've yet to see a video on musicians that had this level of intimacy. I decided to start this project on Our Ceasing Voice on my two month trip through Europe. I had already seen them in Budapest and Vienna the year prior and had established a friendship, so I thought I might as well.

I had the fear that bringing a recording camera into the scene would detract from my own personal experiences with who I already consider as friends. But surprisingly to me, it did not. For the week I spent in Austria I shot 55 gigs of footage. I edited during my stay in Budapest, Hungary and Sofia, Bulgaria. Right when I finished my first cut my external hard drive slid off the desk and hit the floor and sustained severe mechanical damage. I couldn't back up the project onto my computer, it had no space. I deemed the project as dead. But at least two people got to see it.

After arriving back to NYC I took the hard drive in for repairs. What was claimed to be a 3-5 day repair ended up taking 3 weeks. When I received my new hard drive with the restored data I realized I had lost almost (if not more than) 50% of my data. 20 out of 60 files were completely corrupted and the rest were partially corrupted. Videos that could play were segmented, 40 seconds of good footage followed by 20 blank seconds, then a minute of good footage... etc. etc. The project had to edited with pieces of footage. It was very, very difficult to create this re-edit especially since I lost some pivotal scenes, but I was up for the challenge. Plus, this means too much to me to give up. It took me more than 10x the amount of time it took me to cut the original edit. The original was 20 minutes long (5 minutes longer than my target length for this video project series). This edit is at my target length, but took me a while to cut it in such a way so that I could meet that target. I am not 100% pleased with the pacing. But for what it's worth, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Anyway, it is now finished. Now I would like to move on to some more bands as well as my idea for "Raw New York" featuring street musicians in the same fashion as this "presents..." project.