Last Night at the LRT - Neo-Noir Music Video

Part of my ongoing efforts to promote my store, Big Shadows, is to create videos and promo reels that capture the noir/film-noir/neo-noir vibe and provoke enough of an emotional reaction that the viewer will be motivated to check the store out. "Last Night at the LRT" is my latest attempt at this, a neo-noir video featuring the absolutely banging music of Fourier Wave Device (used with his permission). It was supposed to cap out at 90 seconds (the maximum length for a reel on Facebook and Instagram), but I was enjoying the project so much I ended up animating the entire 4:34 of the track. Expect to see a 90 second version soon.

There are thousands of online stores out there all competing for attention in the marketplace, and almost all the ads I see on social media for such stores do the very expected and ordinary thing, which is show you a bunch of their products. This is usually a post with multiple photos, perhaps edited into a slideshow if they are feeling particularly adventurous. I can understand the logic of it - show people what you're selling - but there are drawbacks. The first is just how common these ads are and thus very easy to ignore and scroll past. The second is that, unless the viewer takes the time to click on the post and actually look at the photos, the images of the products will be very small and lack resolution. This problem is made worse if the selling point is a design on a product such as a t-shirt - you have a small image of the design on a small photo/mockup of a t-shirt on, usually, a small phone screen where most people interact with social media. How are you supposed to grab people's attention under those circumstances? Having a niche helps a lot - a rabid Star Wars fan is probably going to check out anything with Star Wars content, for example - but the secret sauce, I think, is to have added value by actually entertaining the potential customer and creating an emotional experience. And so, the video and promo reel strategy.

Here's the video. If there are any playback issues, you can also find it on YouTube here.

For those who are interested in technical details, the images were made with Midjourney, which were then turned into video clips using Kling AI, and then edited together using CyberLink PowerDirector 365. The resolution is fine for phones and most desktops, but looks distinctly 2K on a large screen TV. At some point, I will have to invest in video uprezzing software from Topaz.