The brief
A lyric video for "Belly Of The Beast", a single by the artist Levi Dozier. He sent his photos and the song, and the video had to carry his words on screen, line by line, in a look that felt handmade.
What we made
- A 2:19 music video at 1920 x 1080 and 24 frames a second, on the original audio
- A vertical master at 1080 x 1920 from the same timeline, with every lyric moved into the phone safe zone
- Lyrics on label tape set in the cover's type, typewriter cards and red marker notes
- An end card that sends people to stream the single
How it works
The whole video is rendered in code, frame by frame, in Python with OpenCV and Pillow. Word timings come from a transcript of the song, and beat and bass envelopes drive the motion, so the tape lands on the word.
The arc follows the song. The first hook burns the world down to grey, the verse brings the color back line by line, and the last hooks go full sunburst. The artist's photos are printed as halftone duotones on torn paper; some backgrounds are generated print plates and a few short CG loops, used behind his photos.
Scenes run at 12 frames a second and hold for two, like stop motion, while the film finish changes every frame: halation, misregistered color plates, gate weave, grain, dust and light leaks at the section changes.
What we threw away
The artist reviewed every version. This is version 4. For it we took out personal photos at his request, swapped in the real single art and cleaned up the credits. Earlier versions are not shown anywhere.
Limits
The song and the photos belong to the artist. The short CG loops are soft because they were enlarged from small clips, and the typewriter cards read small on a phone.
