Exclusive Interview with Cranius

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Check out our Exclusive Interview with Cranius!

This is the 63rd post in our Musician of the Day series.

Cranius is a true WoW fan and gamer. He’s been through it all, the good, the bad, and the undead. But what makes him truly amazing is that his love of the game turned into making videos. What started out small, grew bigger and bigger until Cranius was creating his own music to go along with his videos. The music became even more popular than the videos, so much so that Cranius has recently released his first album – Big Blue Dress, which is a compilation of 5 of his most popular WoW inspired songs.



Click here to Listen to Big Blue Dress by Cranius!
[audio http://fansiter.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/bigbluedress.mp3]



Stephanie: Where did the name Cranius come from?

Cranius: I wanted a name for a mage in a game I was playing before WoW called “Asheron’s Call” (AC). Mages usually maxed out “intelligence”, which affected their magical powers, so I tried to think of a name that would fit someone with a large brain. Cranium became Cranius, and that character turned out to be my most viable. Soon all my gamer friends (and enemies) knew me as “Cranius” and it became my online identity.

Stephanie: So how did you get started with creating video game music and videos?

Cranius: The videos started first. I was initially inspired by game trailers for various games. For example, Turbine would release trailers for up-coming Asheron’s Call patches to get players excited about the patch. I had the idea to use homemade “trailers” as recruiting videos to show would-be guild members what your guild was all about. The music came later as I found that the stories I wanted to tell really deserved their own original music, and also because I recognized that using copyrighted music might eventually lead to trouble, even if it wasn’t being enforced at the time.

Stephanie: How long had you been playing WoW when you started making videos? Do you still play WoW?

Cranius: I started playing WoW on opening night in November 2004. I stood in line with all the other gamer nerds to buy my copy at midnight, and played through the night. I made my first WoW video about 3 months later. I still play WoW, though I have been taking a break recently to try out a new MMO called “Aion”. I generally try every new MMO that comes out for a month or so.

Stephanie: What was your first song/video?

Cranius: As my guild was all about PvP, I made my first video, “Beer for my Horses”, to show people what it would be like to be in a guild that liked PvP since many people hadn’t really experienced that yet. Or if they had, their experience was bad. I wanted to show them what success looked like, to show them how fun it could be, and to inspire like-minded people to join our guild so that we could be even more successful. The video turned out to be a raging success and started a new creative release for me.
I wrote my first song for a movie in early 2006. It was called “Big Blue Dress”, and is still my most popular song and the title of my album. It’s about a mage who is lamenting the fact that he has to wear dresses (aka “robes”). Since writing that song, I generally only do original music now (with some exceptions).

Stephanie: How do you create your videos? What is the process?

Cranius: First comes the idea. I have little control over this. A vision forms in my head, images, sounds, critical lyrics. Sometimes I write ideas down so that I won’t forget them, but generally it’s just floating around in my head. I may shoot a few “proof of concept” scenes just to see if my idea really looks as cool as I think it will. If I’m writing an original song for the video, I’ll agonize over the song for months (or worse), trying to dial in something I think people will like. Some filming I can do alone with my own characters and some requires actors. Once I’m ready to shoot the video, I recruit actors and schedule a time to do “filming” much like you would do for making a real movie. In-game filming is done with fraps, which records what you see on your screen into movie clips. After I have enough footage to start assembling the video, I start to edit it together with the music using Sony Vegas. Recently, Legs and I have been working together to make movies and so this process is a little different, but essentially the same steps are involved.

Stephanie: Do you start with a song first or a video idea first?

Cranius: After the “story” has developed, then usually the song comes first. Once I have a semi-final version of the song, I will start to film and put things together. Often times I’ll then bounce back and forth between iterations of the song and the video until it’s just right.

Stephanie: Why do you think your videos have become so popular?

Cranius: I think the biggest reason is that I was the first guy to write an original song for a WoW video. I think fans really appreciate hearing something especially written for them in their fantasy world.

Stephanie: How did you get the idea to come out with an entire album of songs?

Cranius: As soon as I released my first song, “Big Blue Dress”, people started asking for more. They also kept asking, “is this song on iTunes”? So it was my fans’ idea more than mine.

Stephanie: How has it been received so far?

Cranius: It’s been amazing. I have no idea how well it’s actually selling because that data won’t come in for a while, but all the reviews, thousands of YouTube comments, emails, facebook posts, etc have been overwhelmingly positive.

Stephanie: What are you most proud of about releasing your first album?

Cranius: The fact that I released it. It has been something I’ve been thinking about for years, and was close to talking myself out of it for a variety of reasons. Mostly, I’m just a perfectionist and it’s hard to “finish” something. I really have to force myself to do that regularly, and this album was no exception.

Stephanie: Do you have ideas for more albums?

Cranius: I’ve never had a shortage of ideas. The thing I find myself short of is time. Eventually I will be able to finish enough songs to warrant releasing a 2nd album, but it may be a while before that happens.



Stephanie: What do you find to be your biggest inspiration in writing music?

Cranius: When I find something funny, touching, inspiring, etc, I generally think others will feel the same way. My inspiration is really just my own experience. For example, when I did the Eastern Plaguelands, I was touched by the story of Pamela and her doll. I’m not really much of a lore guy, so when this story touched me, I knew there was something special about it. I wrote “Darrowshire” as a result of just doing the quest.

Stephanie: Horde or Alliance?

Cranius:Both, but my main characters are Alliance.

Stephanie: What’s your race?

Cranius: Human, though I did spend a few years with a Gnome Mage back when their racial ability, “Escape Artist”, was too useful for a PvP mage to ignore.

Stephanie: What’s your main?

Cranius: My main is currently a human death knight. You may have seen him in “Don’t Make Me Get My Main” or in “Last Man Standing”. I had been playing a mage for 4 years. Other classes just didn’t appeal to me. There was something about the Death Knight that caught my eye, and I’ve been playing him ever since. My mages are jealous.

Stephanie: Favorite instance?

Cranius: I really don’t like instances very much. I know most people don’t agree with me on this, but there are a lot of things about instances that bother me. Perhaps the biggest of these is that I can’t kill you if you’re in an instance, and I’m a PvPer. It kinda defeats the purpose of having a PvP server if you can just hop into an instance portal and be safe for hours. Some of the best times I’ve ever had playing games involved battling for control of important dungeons in games where instances didn’t exist. I miss those times. That said, I do like to experience each instance at least once to see the content and the story line. My favorite is probably “Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme” because it was so awesome to see Stratholme before the plague and to see the characters involved in that story. I wish they’d do more of those, particularly something around the Under City (hint, hint).

Stephanie: Have you ever camped someone?

Cranius: Regularly, but only in retribution. It’s what inspired both “Don’t Make Me Get My Main” and “Happy Place”.

Stephanie: Favorite battleground?

Cranius: Old school Alterac Valley, where battles could rage literally for days, and where you had to release powerful giants, armies of ram-riding dwarves, and flying NPCs to assist you. Good times.



Stephanie: What WoW achievement are you most proud of?

Cranius: I think I was perhaps most proud of hitting rank 12 (Marshal) in the old PvP system without the help of an organized team. That said, it was a huge grind and I swore off grinding after that.

Stephanie: Are/Were you ever addicted?

Cranius: I was, but I no longer am. I have been trying to spice things up a bit more and have been largely successful with that while still remaining a gamer at heart.

Stephanie: What do you think is the best video sharing site on the web?

Cranius: YouTube. There are technically better sites, and there are sites that are awesome for WoW videos or gaming videos specifically, but you just can’t beat YouTube for trying to reach an audience.

Stephanie: What video is your favorite?

Cranius: That’s a tough question because there are so many over the years that I have enjoyed immensely. There are also so many different genres and styles to choose from that it’s hard to say that one is better than the other. I guess if I had to pick one video to call my favorite, it would be the one that inspired me to start making WoW movies. That movie is called “Medieval Man” by Balgosa Windspire, and isn’t exactly the best example of movie-making. However, it was the first “machinima” I saw for WoW and it used a song from the old Warcraft II CD, which had a hidden track with this song on it. I played a LOT of Warcraft II and was already familiar with the song. This movie struck a chord with me and inspired me to start thinking about making music videos for WoW

Stephanie: How long does it take you to put a video together?

Cranius: The movie can take a few days or several months depending on the complexity and the techniques used. I think the average from start to finish is probably a month or so.

Stephanie: How many tries does it usually take to get a scene just the way you want it?

Cranius: If I have a very specific scene I want to get using in-game filming, I’ll generally shoot it 2 or 3 times. One of those will usually work. Sometimes I have to go back and try again if I didn’t notice something that needs to be fixed until later. Also, I often get “happy accidents” where some of the best scenes in my movies weren’t planned at all. They just happened while I was filming.

Stephanie: Are all your videos made entirely from game play?

Cranius: Of the videos I’ve made myself, only 1 has a single composited scene. Everything else is filmed in-game. I’ve been recently collaborating with Legs, and she brings new skills to the table that I don’t possess. We try to do in-game filming wherever possible to make it seem more “real”, but there are scenes that you just can’t film in game. For those, Legs uses her compositing techniques rather than in-game filming. There are some really good examples of this in our recent collaboration “Wrought”. That movie wouldn’t be the same with just in-game filming.

Stephanie: Did you ever think your videos would become this popular?

Cranius: No, I really didn’t. When I got started, nobody had heard of YouTube. Video streaming wasn’t common, and there was a huge tax to pay in downloading videos (the time it took to download, and the hard drive space it required to store). Video sharing and social networking weren’t what they are today. Today it’s just part of the culture to pass video links around, and I certainly didn’t anticipate that, especially for “gamer” videos. I also really didn’t anticipate how much people would like my music. That was another pleasant surprise.

Stephanie: Are you going to continue creating videos? Are more on the way?

Cranius: There will definitely be more videos. I’m working on a new song now and I have about 5 more ideas in the oven.

To learn more about his website.

Click here to Listen to Big Blue Dress by Cranius!
[audio http://fansiter.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/bigbluedress.mp3]