WASABI MUSIC VIDEO
This is a music video I made for the second single from Snakeskin's 2024 album, Summoning Suit. In the video, Snake is at home facing a mysterious holographic archway she is controlling with the sound of her synthesizer. Static and images appear within it as she adjusts the dials and sings a few simple lyrics over and over again, “There’s a single sobbing key on my keyboard…” The imagery never resolves, and the experiment seems to fail. Looking out the apartment window, a red sky is spotted with floating creatures we call winchmimes. The apartment is detached and flying through the air in a crystalline force field, shepherded by a gigantic bird made of light. Returning to the arch, Snake sings the lyrics once more, dancing as the synthesizer melodies become voice-like and powerful. Like the light from a distant lighthouse, a signal flashes and sounds from the arch. The image is resolving itself. The silhouette of a suit of armor. A glacier. Snake is there in the image. Is this what she is looking for? She steps into the arch and vanishes. Wasabi was filmed at home in Williamsburg during the pandemic.
UNREAL FOR SPECIAL EFFECTS
This video includes a sequence in which we pull back from Snake's apartment to reveal that it is flying through the sky, disconnected from a building. To create this, I used Unreal Engine 5's visual effects tools. I used its sky and cloud features to create an intense, red sunset, and I recreated the apartment's exterior using their Megascans. Snake is a 2D visual plate that I composited into the environment.
I really enjoyed using Unreal Engine for video, I think it will be a big part of my workflow going forward. I also used Unreal to create the image of the Summoning Suit that appears in the archway at the end of the video.
