The Goal

I joined Mixed Company as a freshman at Stanford to continue my love of singing and performing, and to find a community of people who also shared this passion while at Stanford.

In my second year, we were hit with the pandemic at the same time that I was elected into a leadership role as an Assistant Music Director and Performance manager. Due to the pandemic all of our activities had to be virtual, and so we as officers had to find out how to turn a cappella virtual.

The Approach

In Mixed Company (or Mixed Co for short) the officer team is led by three members--the Music Director (MD) and two Assistant Music Directors (AMDs). As a member of this team it was our job to set the direction for what Mixed Co would be in the coming year.

We decided early on that singing over zoom was not feasible due to zoom, and in a round of meetings early on we decided to focus on video performances throughout the year. We divided primary roles among the three of us--Eric on arranging new music and directing the group, Ashwin on sound production, and Me on video editing and production. At this point I had very little experience with video editing and no experience with Premiere, but as always I was excited to take on this challenge and to learn something new.

Early Year Production

My first project was “And So It Goes” originally performed by Billy Joel. In the early stages I familiarized myself with the software (Adobe Premiere), focused on layouts, equal screen time among members, and alignment of video and audio tracks--as our process required to be edited and refined separately.

To create these videos we asked members to record themselves singing their part of a song in garageband and export it to a google drive folder where it would be received and edited by Ashwin. After Ashwin finished a rough cut of the audio, I would ask members to record themselves singing it performatively (with emotion so as to be engaging), and submit it to a drive folder where I would then receive it and time it to the video.

I then would carefully lay out members so that everyone could be seen throughout the video as done in similar virtual choir videos.

Google drive submission folder

Example of layout planning that occurred for each video

Layout in one of our videos titled "Omen"

Late Year Production

As I became more familiar with the software I began making design decisions. Cutting out video based on auditory queues, playing with placement and symmetry to create engaging layouts, weaving choreography into videos.

Below are examples of my experimentations with layouts, choreography, and cutting video.

Layout found in our song "Lelands Island" which as been passed down orally since the groups start in 1985

Layout from "Omen", a ballad originally performed by Sam Smith

Another area of exploration and creativity for me was including animations that I created to emphasize central elements of the song and add some graphic interest at the beginning of each video. Below are two highlighted animations from these videos.

Break My Hear x Don't Start Now

My most ambitious project was the song Break My Heart X Don't Start Now mashup arranged by our awesome music director Eric, and mixed by the incredibly talented Ashwin. I edited this video much later on in my production journey and was ready to take on a challenge.

In this video I experimented with splicing up video so that key people are featured when they need to be. Color tinting and larger videos contribute to the focus and energy of the song and it is my proudest video to date. Here is that video below.

When I finished my gap year the thing that I was most proud of was this group and how we were able to not only continue making music, but also keep the strength and supportiveness that it has always been to me in the midst of being apart.

I learned so much in this process about communication when a group is remote, the importance of checking in with one another, video editing, visual design, Adobe Premiere and After Effects, and I honestly believe that it was due to the support of this group, the incredible commitment from my fellow officers, and the dedication of every member to show up and contribute. I am so grateful to them and so proud of the work we achieved.

Check out some of our other videos below!