Hail to the Hills of Westwood
Release date: June 13, 2021. ISRC: QZK6M2136603. DK UPC: 196322142761 . Label: BRAINIAC Records
Winning piece for UCLA Chancellor’s Service Award 2021
Alma Mater of UCLA
(Listen at the bottom of the page)
Since Covid broke everything, the commencement of the Political Science department will be held online this June 13th. In their email asking for students’ photos and a message to put on their powerpoint, they also asked for student performers for 1) Star Spangled banner, 2) this Alma Mater, 3) recite a poem. They also gave examples of the video they want. Poem recital? Yuck. Star Spangled Banner? It’s kind of boring to be honest, because if it’s just me standing in front of a camera singing without accompany, it sounds really weird without audience. That’s how I started the idea of doing a cover of this music. While I was still on bed. Procrastinating.
I know I wanted to make something that makes me stand out in front of all other people, so I knew I had to add new verses and rhythms to the original score. I found the original sheet music on Musescore as always, and then sped up the thing by 2x speed, because slow songs are not fun to make. That’s why I decided to do a repeat, and then add my own rhythm.
I first added new rhythms through the synths in Logic Pro X, tested a few ones out, and then finally decided on the one right here. Then I just started recording. My first recording was just the original score and a repeat, with the repeat having my own changes, which made it sound like gospel music, and the whole thing only took me a morning, that is recording and editing. One day! The last time I had so many singing parts was The Longest Time, and that song took me three whole months to make!
Then I kept the song in a loop to see if there are any problems. It occurred to me that the final product of the original score and the repeat is only about a minute and 6 seconds. That is waaaay too short for me to publish it. So, I wrote my own lyrics for yet another repeat of the repeat, and here we are.
Video
Now I have created something so unique and grand and (insert another adjective), I need a video that stands out as well. So, two days from when I finished recording and editing the audio, I started recording. So when I was recording, I had no idea what kind of video I was going to make, whether it’s just 2x2, or 4x4, or even the later 6x6. I started recording just for 2x2. Oh the 2x2. It was such a pain to record the first few “mes” appearing in the video, because I keep forgetting the lyrics. I can remember the original lyrics, but I can’t seem to remember the ones I wrote myself. That’s why at the repeat, you can see me making a mistake on the top left corner.
Then I realized that it is such a wasted potential for this video. So I started recording the 4x4 people. The truth is, I never made a plan of this, so I didn’t know how many people or how many times should I record, I just recorded blindly, and it was so lucky for me that I got everything I need for the 4x4. I had the top, middle, and bottom people singing to different things, which is kinda cool.
Then, the 6x6. Truth is, I came up with this idea after I finished recording the people for 4x4. Then, without planning, I started recording the 6x6, and sadly for me I didn’t have enough “mes” taken at the get-go. But either way, that’s the recording.
The editing tho, is a whole different story. Since four 4k videos stitched together has enough resolution to be 8k, that’s what I wanted my video to be, a 8k video to show the true glory of my vision. I also thought that my new iMac is powerful enough to run 8k videos in FCPX. I was half right. The computer sure can take in 8k videos and edit them, but they did not react well to four 4k videos playing at the same time. It was a little bit choppy at the beginning, but it’s still just only four 4k videos, so it worked fine. After I finished the inner 2x2, I started the 4x4, and oooooh boy. The computer started fanning up like crazy, but it still managed to play the video in the monitor of FCPX, with some stuttering. It got me worried about the outer 6x6, and boy was I right.
The 6x6 ripped my iMac apart. Even though my iMac has an intel i9 processor, 128g ram, and AMD 5700X graphics card, it crashed so many times. And by crashing, I don’t mean crashing the app. By crashing, I mean the whole computer crashes. By my estimate, making the outer video crashed my computer 6 times. But, point of contention, it was about twenty 4k videos playing at the same time, and I didn’t want to sacrifice video resolution while during playback to ensure the lines all met, so yeah, it hurt my baby boy a lot.
I was going to make the transition between 2x2, 4x4, and 6x6 like how it is on my instagram release, but then I thought the computer is not going to take that too good, so I just did what I did here.
So I pitched the finished product to Alex Leung of the political science department, and he absolutely loves it. Then I figured, hey, since I can’t go outdoors during covid, I can’t contribute to UCLA and the surrounding area to be qualified for the Chancellor’s Service Award. Maybe this video can show my love to UCLA and they will like it and give the award to me.
Lucky for me, they loved the video too. That is why I would be wearing a blue and yellow honor cord on my right shoulder, next to my honor cord for latin honors on my left shoulder. The reason why receiving this award was so exciting for me, is because people are actually actively loving my video. People like my stuff! My stuff makes people smile in amazement, and that reminds me why I started YouTube in the first place; to make stuff that no one has seen before, and make them so creative, they must clench their pearls (HIMYM reference). That’s why I jumped from my seat when I received the email from the selecting committee of the award. They reminded me why I am doing this in the first place, and I have nothing but appreciation to these people who saw my video, and liked it so much they decided to give an award that’s not even related to the purpose of the award, to me. For that, I will be forever grateful.
Wow I wrote a lot. Yeah, the video took me longer to make than the audio, a historic first! The video took me about a week to finish, while the audio only took me a day.
Thank you.
Album Cover Picture
This, as you can see, is a screenshot of the Instagram version of my video. There are 2 reasons as to why i used a screenshot from one of my videos. The first one, well, I was lazy, I didn’t want to just create, think, take the picture, and then edit the picture for another month (yeah, like my Daybreak’s Bell cover picture). Second one, since this video is what landed me the Chancellor’s Service Award, might as well show it on the cover photo.
If you have seen my video at all, you should know that the only time where every “mes” on screen open our mouths at the same time, is at the ending climax where there is 6x6 people. However, although it might sound fancy, it looks too messy if I would put it on a cover photo (hey that rhymes). What I mean, is that since the video starts with 2x2, then 4x4, and finally 6x6, people know that it is always me singing because there is a transition. Even though each one of me is going to look small when it’s at the 6x6 stage, people still know it’s me because they just know (can’t get into psychology here). In that sense, if I just take a screenshot of 6x6 here, each one of my faces are small, so no one is going to recognize my face. 2x2 is just too plain, that’s why I settled on 4x4, which is my train of thought when deciding on the YouTube thumbnail.
After finding the raw video of the layer that I am looking for, I took a screenshot, and here is the background of this video. I know I have to add my logo somewhere, and I can’t risk it covering one person if it is going to crawl up on one of the corners. That’s why I decided to enlarge it and put it right in the middle. And, to make people know that I won the award, I found puffy letters on Google and sticked them into the logo. On the heart, I wrote “Class of 2021” and “summa cum laude”, cuz yay ego. At the ended, I scanned my honor cord for the award using the scanning machine, and added it up there as a frame, because I just have to satisfy my own ego.
Contributors
Who gave me advice
Professor Chi Li
She’s the best