Heather Miller Music

Keep Telling Me Lyric Video

I’ve been wanting to do a fun animated lyric video for my song “Keep Telling Me” for a while.  Aside from the fact that I think those lyric videos are cool, that song seemed to lend well to the format as it’s more intellectual than visual.  I kept trying to search different ways to make lyric videos and the stuff I found was either expensive or not what I wanted.  Somehow in my last search I got some inspiration to try a few things in iMovie, which I already have, and came up with this:

It’s perhaps not as splashy and slick as I imagined in my head, but that, I think, is one of the main messages of the song - my head has a lot of big fancy ideas, and a lot of rules about how things should be before I get do them.  My heart just wants to reach out and connect and share and love!  So again and again, the message I keep getting is to work with what I have now, as is.  Who I am and what I have and what I can do RIGHT NOW is good enough, and important to someone, even if it’s only me.  And not just right now, but all along - like for example, I’ve had iMovie on my laptop for as long as I’ve had my laptop!!  If sometime I get the time, money and resources to make a super slick video and I want to re-do this, I can do it then!  It’s all good!

As I’ve mentioned before, Keep Telling Me is the song I wrote for the committee in my head that I’ve learned to be the CEO of - I will hear the doubts out, but they don’t get to run the show!  And clearly that is a continuing lesson, as just my experience of making the video shows.

In case you missed it, this song is from my Anchor EP, available pretty much anywhere you buy digital downloads online!

Here are a few options:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/anchor-ep/id574218079
http://heathermiller.bandcamp.com
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/heathermiller

How about you? What things do you need to keep telling yourself?

Tagged: videolyric videoKeep Telling Mesonglearningconfidence

The Anchor Kickstarter is Alive and Kicking!

I’ve known for over a year now that one of the last pieces of my Rubicon Year project was going to be a Kickstarter campaign to help cover the final costs of the actual CD (If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, check it out, it’s a great way for independent artists of every medium to fund creative projects!).  I had originally thought I’d launch it while still in Austin, but Dan wisely advised to wait so I could focus completely on the recording and be totally present for that. 

After the recording was the flurry of rehearsals, final shows, packing, and Kerrville Folk Festival, so that wasn’t a good time to launch either.  Then came re-integrating with my life back in Iowa, and it ended up that creating my Kickstarter video was a really fantastic way to help me gain some perspective and clarity on the past year, because I had to look back at what I’d done in order to tell my story. 

My brothers turned out to be instrumental in helping me through the process, each one of them interviewed me, and in my explaining to them and their questions back to me, things gradually got more clear about what was important to say so people could at least get a picture of my year, condensed in just a few minutes.  Collin especially was great with his great insight into storyline, editing the majority of the video and creating a bunch of slides.  I’m pretty happy with how the video turned out, I ended up using clips from both sessions with my brothers:

If you’re reading this elsewhere, you may need to come to the blog to see the video.

Besides the video, I have my story written out with a bit more detail in places, plus pictures of the album artwork and several of the backer rewards over on the Kickstarter site.

Creating the Kickstarter project took a whole new level of bravery.  It’s one thing to perform at an open mic where everyone gets ten minutes no matter how good they are.  It’s another thing to step up to the plate and say, “Hey, I want to do this in a bigger way and I need your help, I can’t do it alone.”

Because really, I can’t.  Even if I had the money right now, or had to wait till I’d saved up enough to press the CD myself, what am I gonna do with all those copies if no one wants to listen? 

It’s time to take the next step.  It’s all unfolding beautifully, I had to gain the confidence in myself first, that the songs were good and worthy and that there were people out there who wanted to hear them.  The 157 open mics in a year did that.  And also thanks to that new confidence, even though the next step is a combination of a little scary and mostly exciting, I already know that I can take on new things and achieve my goals if I take them a bit at a time!  So, other next steps include playing more long sets, opening acts, playing out regionally, and continuing to work on my guitar and vocals and of course, keep writing songs!

It’s clear to me now, that even if I didn’t need to do a Kickstarter to raise funds, creating a video like this would have been a great capstone piece to my year.  I don’t know that I would have done it without the Kickstarter impetus though, so thanks Universe, for working that one out. :-)

I’m 37% funded already with 20 days left till the deadline, still quite a ways to go, but very exciting progress!  54 folks have made pledges and countless others have posted, tweeted and otherwise shared my project with their friends.  Apparently getting to 30% is a big milestone in a project because statistically 90% of the projects that make it to 30% go on to be fully funded.  So that’s a great sign that I’ve already passed the 30% mark! 

If you pledged already, THANK YOU!! If you haven’t, I hope you’ll at least check out the video, because I’m really happy with how it turned out and it really does give a nice little summary of my year.  I’m also really excited about the different rewards I came up with, they all have special significance to my journey in Austin, and many of them tie in to the songs on the EP. Then, if you’re inspired to pledge and/or share links, I’d be super grateful, because again, I can’t do this (at least in the time and way I’d like to) without you!

Tagged: kickstarterAnchor EPvideoRubicon Year