Gerda’s Song

With scenes from Hans Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’, Gerda’s song is a story about friendship, love, and a little girl who never gave up.

About this video

I had already written part of the music with the story of The Snow Queen in my mind. That music depicted the start where Kai gets the evil glass shard in his eye, and the end where Gerda finally finds him, and frees him from the Snow Queen through her love and the warmth of the tears she cries.

The melody you hear when Gerda cries is the original theme. You hear this two or three times at various points. The vocal, the voice that sings Gerda’s actual song, is not A.I. It is a real voice. It is a so called virtual instrument, made from many short phrases sung and recorded in different keys and styles by a real human singer. It is played using a keyboard where this controls the key and the musical phrase. The software then controls where the phrase occurs and the timing. This has to be woven together and synchronised with the video. The musical phrases must also harmonise with the underlying harmonic structure of the song.

The video suggests, as in the original story, that by the time Gerda finds Kai, the two of them have grown up. The story is one of love and determination. It’s telling us never to give up. I looked around to find some stills from the story to make a video slide show like I have done for some of the rooms on 3DX. The ones I found were better than expected. I used about 15 of them, edited them, and used them to create the animations for the video. I then added more music to complete the soundtrack. This was mainly the piano music you hear at different points.

If you know the story of The Snow Queen the video needs no further explanation, as it is a number of short scenes from the story, with emphasis on the beginning and the end. The creation of this video was unlike others I’ve made where I either created a video for my music, or I created a music soundtrack for a video. In this case the two parts grew together organically, with some of the music prompting the visuals, and some of the visuals prompting the music.

I really love the story of the Snow Queen. It was my favourite bedtime story when I was a child, so I have enjoyed making this video very much. I hope you enjoy it too.

By Elizabeth Moonlight