New Video: Venice Beatdown

For many years, I’ve wanted to bring together music, graphics, animation and video into a single creative process and product. This is one such attempt. Originally, the goal was just just have something simple and easy. Something fun to look at while listening. I figured that I’d just throw some graphics and video footage into After Effects, slap on a few effects, tweak a few keyframes and Bam!

Of course, I couldn’t make it that easy on myself.

In typical Beef fashion, I got carried away. As with any new tool that I explore – and generally having no idea what I’m doing – I went down the rabbit hole of effects, layers, blending and creating movement in shapes and colors using audio from different parts of the music. Six long days, dozens of hours of Googling and one shower later, the video was done.

Good Lord! What have I created?

While the imagery is a bit random, it’s all inspired by the time I spent in Venice Beach when living in Los Angeles. The song idea itself was conceived in 2005, in my tiny studio apartment at Pico & 6th in Santa Monica.

Enjoy.