Making of the 'Dirge of the Corsairs' Music Video

On Friday morning, I took a stroll up into the hills outside Sparks, Nevada. I was hoping to find a desert landscape that would serve as the Planet Garuda, which is a fictional desert world that I created for my science fiction series, The Corsair Uprising. It was a beautiful day and I found that the desert landscape wasn't as barren as I'd thought. There were lizards, spiders, crickets, jack-rabbits, birds, and a number of other small creatures.

I hiked about a mile up the side of a large hill (I guess where some people live they'd call them mountains, but living near the Sierra Nevadas means they get downgraded to hills). I didn't know this before going out on my little journey, but there are some seriously massive rocks just jutting out of the Earth all over the high desert.

I continued walking up the side of this hill, realizing that running a few days a week was no match for the kind of workout I was in for. My pack had about 15 pounds of gear in total, which isn't a lot, but became far more noticeable the more I walked. Apparently being in shape and being in 'hiking' shape are two different things.

Before filming, I had made a list of a few shots I wanted to get, but on the whole I was pretty open to just seeing what I could find. The song I had created was about two and a half minutes long and I needed quite a bit more footage than that for the editing process. It took just an hour or two to get the shots I needed, but I hung around a while longer just to see what I could find. I'm really lucky I did, because I found this little guy (at right). At first he was a little skittish, but I followed him and he let me get my camera within a foot of his face. Pretty brave!

After walking around a little more, I found another lizard of the same species that was a little smaller, and that one did not cooperate so well. I decided after that it was time to head home and start editing. On the way back down the hill I saw something zip past me. It was a fairly large jack-rabbit and it was fast. Though I had my Nikon D5100 in my hand, I wasn't fast enough to get it on film. This thing was tearing by!

All-in-all I think my little adventure was a blast. I didn't see any tarantulas or rattlesnakes, so that always makes for a good day. I really lucked out seeing this photo-friendly lizard as well. To see the results of my project, I've embedded the completed video below. I added a yellow filter in the editing process to make it look more like the alien planet I had imagined, with a sun far more intense than our own. Enjoy!


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