Years ago, while living in Indonesia, I wrote a song that was picked up by a producer in Singapore. He liked the song, wanted to produce it and, much to my delight and surprise, even liked my vocals.

But he told me that songs on their own rarely went anywhere. I needed a video to go with it.

At the time, he suggested a budget of $10,000 to shoot something fairly basic that would illustrate the song. Suffice to say, it never happened.

Why not? Well, it’s a long story, best summed up by advising you never to excitedly telephone your heavily pregnant wife, sitting in a wintry UK, to announce that you are about to shoot a music video with several smoking-hot, scantily clad models on Tanjong Beach in Singapore.

The point is, he was right. Even a great song benefits from having a video to accompany it. That is arguably even more important today, when much of the audience discovers new music while scrolling on a mobile phone. The sound may not be wonderful, but a good image can still jump out and grab you.

In the past, even a modest music video was beyond my means. Yes, I know you can shoot almost anything on a mobile phone, but my ideas have always tended to wander somewhat beyond the practical capabilities of one man holding an iPhone.

Once again, artificial intelligence has changed what is possible. Making a music video that looks the part and genuinely brings a song to life is suddenly achievable without the budget of a small independent film.

A quick search will uncover a bewildering number of online tools which, for a modest fee or subscription, can produce something passable, and sometimes surprisingly good. Some will let you upload your latest hit and leave them to interpret it. The results vary. Considerably.

If you want more control, you can create character sheets, design locations and backdrops, prepare individual shots and write detailed production notes. You can put on your director’s and producer’s hats, although, in my case, both are still marked Trainee.

I tend to use several different platforms, plus a separate editing package to assemble the resulting scenes into something hopefully coherent and entertaining. As with most things, the more thought and effort you put in, the better the result tends to be.

It isn’t always perfect.

It has also been a long and occasionally frustrating learning curve, and I am very much still learning. But taking a song, building a time-coded storyboard and developing the mood, look and feel you want is enormously satisfying when it all comes together.

Most of the time, I thoroughly enjoy it.

Then there was Satellite Sue.

Sue is the subject of the third track on Not Famous Yet. I needed to create an eight-second Spotify Canvas: the short looping video that plays behind a song and, hopefully, catches the listener’s attention.

Simple, I thought.

Sue would walk away from the viewer along a city street at night, turn her head to look back and give the camera a big smile.

It was not quite as easy as expected.

At one point, I seriously contemplated calling an exorcist. The accompanying clip will explain why.

In fairness to Sue, this was one of my earliest experiments and I am getting better.

Honestly.

The first full video, accompanying the title track Not Famous Yet, will hopefully be released alongside the single.

I hope you like it, and I can confidently promise that nobody’s head rotates through 360 degrees.

At least, not in the final edit.