As mentioned previously, I have an idea for a music video I’d like to make about my move to the US. But before I make that, I wanted to publish some of the video I took on the trip, in a fairly raw and unedited way, just to get it out there. I already published hours of 4K video from the ship leaving Hamburg, leaving Southampton, and arriving in New York City, recorded with my Sony ZV1 camera on a tripod.

Well, it was time to put together whatever random video I took with my iPhone. And I was just going to stick it all in a video with fades between clips, but there really wasn’t much going on in terms of sound — it needed music. And of course if there was going to be music, I’d better edit the footage a bit more to fit in with the music. So I ended up making something of an impromptu music video. Probably the coolest part (other than the music) is the sunset I recorded from the front of the ship one evening.

The song is ‘America’ by K’s Choice, as covered by my friend Joseph Camann when I requested it on his Patreon. Joseph is a multifaceted and multitalented individual who is also known as Chromatic Verse (mostly for visual art) CamannWordsmith (mostly for writing) and Joseph and the Bear Hat (for song covers.) It is unclear which parts the bear hat played in this cover.

I initially thought that the song ‘America’ would work better for the road trip across America than the trip across the pond, so I spent some time trying to find something else for this one… but come on, ‘America’ has a line about the sun rising and falling, and most of the video is a sunset. How could I not? Also there’s the double bonus of publicising both my friend Joseph and also one of my favourite bands, K’s Choice.

A day or so after we got to NYC, we visited MoMath, and I recently realised that while I’d put up video of Joey Marianer riding a square-wheeled tricycle there, I had forgotten to edit the other video I took of Joey at MoMath. Here’s Joey changing some benches from a triangle shape to a square and back, set to one of the free jingles that comes with Final Cut Pro:

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for a video of whatever I recorded on my phone during our ensuing road trip across the US, which I will inevitably spend more than the expected amount of effort on!