Burlesque Cowgirls

The  dancers in our music video were originally going to be wearing white morph-suits seeing as we couldn't have full frontal nudity for the skull motifs, but the idea has changed so that we will now be having burlesque cowgirls to dance, because apparently that will fit in with the style of our video better. That does mean that their clothing will need to be white in order for them to still be able to make the skulls. White clothes can look pretty trashy, however (with and luck) our video will be in black and white, meaning that this will be far less conspicuous than if it was in colour. If not, we will have a lot of covering up to do. The idea is that we want our dancers to fit in with the rest of our video. These dancers will appeal to our target audience of older men as found in the qualitative research that we conducted on target audience. However, young people

Defining Authenticity In Country Music

Although authenticity is a construct, as defining authenticity means that in binary opposition, we are defining something else as being inauthentic or unoriginal. In country music, authenticity is usually derived at by incorporating the following elements;


1. Acting naturally, this means  a naturalness in the performance, showing emotion and heartache. Our song is about a man's turbulent relationship and possibly the regret that he feels because of it, though possibly at his own misfortune rather than his significant other's. Either way though, there is definitely heartache in there.


2. Incorporating elements of a bluegrass style, this means using acoustic instruments. Our singer will have an acoustic guitar, because the song is an acoustic one.


3. The authentic voice in country music is the slightly gravelised and naturalised tone, and possibly slightly out of key too. The point of country is not being in key or 'singing pretty', remember the first country singers were working men.


4. Signifiers of the country genre, for example Cowboy boots, shirt, Stetson, rhinestones and jeans. Our singer will be wearing most of these things, possibly not the rhinestones because he just isn't happy enough to warrant them.



5. Regions of the mind, traditional country music conjures up images of rural and rustic Americana. We are using the signifiers of this, the bar, the freeway, the open road to evoke this region of the mind of traditional country music.


6. Naturalisation, country music should appear natural and draw on traditions of American society. by incorporating the five previous components, we will be evoking a collective memory of country's past to create an illusion of authenticity in our artist.

Western Look: Nudie Suit

The Original And Post '63 Logo

Nudie And One Of His Cars

The flamboyant, rhinestone-studded, brightly coloured attire often associated with contemporary cowboy types actually originated from a Ukrainian born man named Nudie Cohn in the 1940's.  Nudie started out by making western-style suits, but then moved on to things like cars, which would make him extremely famous in later years. He made suit for almost everyone who was relevant in music, Keith Richards, Gram Parsons, ZZ Top, Hank Williams, and of course Elvis Presley with his gold lamé suit to name a few.

Gram Parsons



Elvis' Gold Lamé Suit

Nudie became well known for his bright colours and quality designs and materials. No expense was ever spared where Nudie was concerned, with some of his suits being worth over $10,000 for the materials used alone.

Retro-authenticity is a key construct in creating our artist. We want him to appear original and authentic, whist at the same time contemporary. We want the retro look and feel to our music video, which is where the 'Nudie' style fts in.

Animatic Feedback

Making and then watching the animatic for our music video actually really helped to establish how long shots needed to be, and we found that our video should be much slower paced than we initially thought. Our song is meant to be quite solemn, which means really slow cuts, and we currently have cuts that are five seconds and under, much too quick to portray the desired effect. We however have now edited our animatic (which you will shortly be able to view on this blog) so that the cuts fit the song a bit better. One of the main reasons for it being much faster-paced than it ought to be, on closer inspection, was because some of the shots that were too short were ones that were a continuous shot that had been drawn more than once. We have also extended the performance element at the start of the video to about thirty seconds rather than the five or so that it currently is. All in all though, it gave us a fairly good idea of what our video would look like (at least in terms of cuts) and helped us to see what will work and wouldn't work, which is essentially the point of the exercise.

Storyboard

 

This is the storyboard for our thriller, drawn by Anna and photographed by Bob and Lillian. This is what would become our animatic later on. This depicts, shot by shot the narrative of our music video and the various angles and shot types that we well use.

Set Design; Props, Location Etc.

The singer in our video will be performing in and walking around environments that make him look as much like an organic star as possible, there will be no white backgrounds or (visible) studios. It will be shot in a small, cheap bar, a dark bedroom and a few shots will be outside in a gloomy looking forest. Locations like these show him to be an organic artist rather than a synthetic one, as a synthetic artist would have an incredibly extravagant, expensive (and tasteless) music video, probably involving lots of dancers, set pieces and props but not a lot of clothing. It would also be shot entirely in a studio, or a fancy nightclub somewhere. That is not the impression that we are going to give of our artist. It will be as if the camera is following him around a fairly average, if not slightly miserable day, although there will be performances cut in as well as all of the skull motifs (gotta keep things interesting). In terms of props, it will mostly be things like cigarettes and booze, as well as his trusty guitar.

The kind of depressing bar he will be singing and drinking in.

 

Choice of drink.

 

Chainsmoker, naturally.

 

Our take on Willie Nelson's 'Trigger'.

Costume For Our Singer

Country was originally sung by the working class men of the Southern US states. Within country music there are several different movements in regard to costume, ranging from country bumpkin to rhinestone cowboys. The costume for our lead singer will be the more contemporary get-up, like Josh T. Pearson and The Felice brothers. Our act is absolutely organic and this authenticity must be reflected in the costume. Country singers were not clean-cut, they were troubled, dishevelled labourers, who remained gentlemen. Therefore, we want our lead singer to some across in a similar light. The dishevelled appearance will comply nice with Richard Dyers theory on stardom suggesting rebellion, an anti-authoritarian attitude, creativity/talent and anger/aggression. These are all desirable traits in a star as the general public may be able to relate to or vicariously adopt the attitudes they find attractive. Not only that, but an authentic country act will appeal to true country fans and this being a song aimed at fairly niche market we will need that. We have looked at a variety of past and contemporary country artists to influence how we want to portray our lead singer, such as Gene Autry, Hank Williams, The Felice Brothers, Shovels and Rope and Josh T. Pearson. All these acts, despite spanning several decades all have similar characteristics of (excluding rhinestone) looking like country folk, being practical e.g. could jump on a horse in the outfits and they are very masculine – accentuate shoulders and Cuban heel gives height. Wild facial hair was not essential, particularly during the more dapper phase country went through in the 40s-60s however, nowadays it is one of the defining aspects of a country singer. A wild beard also suggests maturity and experience which, considering the content of country music (broken relationships, troubled lives) is important. Again this reflects Dyer’s theory’s nicely in the sense it shows rebellion and a disregard for social values (being clean cut and nice). Therefore, when we cast we will have to find someone who has or can grow facial hair as it is going to be a vital element of our star image.  We have been heavily influenced by the costume of Josh T. Pearson whose song we are using in our music video and although not wanting to re-create another Pearson, it is his look which contributes hugely to the sale of his work and thus, it would be foolish to create a completely different style when we have a tried and tested formula in front of us.

 

 

The costume; Wrangler jeans, traditionally worn by cowboys as they have no seams on the inner thigh so are better suited to long days in the saddle. They will be traditional blue denim. Alternatively, depending on how smart we want him to look he could wear slacks. Either would be appropriate so we will use which ever we can find. a belt with a bull head or other cowboy-esque symbols. A traditional cowboy shirt and bolo tie, not tartan or overly decorative as we are going for the more conservative, masculine look. He may also wear some jewellery e.g cross/bull head. A matching jacket will be worn. Not a tasselled jacket, but a denim or casual suit jacket in dark shades. Cowboy boots will be worn. The colour and cut is not important, the boots alone say enough. Finally a traditional cowboy hat will be worn to complete the image.

 

Josh T. Pearson, "Woman When I've Raised Hell" Lyrics & Deconstruction

Below are the lyrics to the song 'Woman When I've Raised Hell', and these are the actual lyrics from his website, we have looked rom them before, but there were some mistakes and none of us really wanted to write them out. We haven't really broken the lyrics down particularly to gather a literal meaning from the song or anything, we just looked at the tone and the general themes of the song (heartbreak, loneliness and as Anna so eloquently put it, 'looking glum'), so it's more about how it sounds then how it reads. There are various reasons as to why we did this, it would be too complicated to take the entire song literally as well as it being in danger of becoming a picture book, the video needs to be slow paced in order to fit in with the song and the genre, I could go on. What we have taken from the lyrics (in a very vague manner), is that the man singing is extremely unhappy with his life and his relationship in which he is abusive to his woman because all he wants to do is drink himself to sleep every night and she won't leave him alone. The song title is 'Woman When I've Raised Hell', which could be interpreted as being a retrospective by an older man who is looking back at things in his life that he regrets, such as domestic violence for example. This can be reflected in our video by black and white film, different images and motifs that will occur and be reoccurring throughout the video (like the skulls that we have planned).

Lyrics:

Woman when I’ve raised hell, you’re gonna know it
There won’t be a shadow of doubt in your bright little mind
No pictures left hangin’ only lonely unpainted nails
Ah Honey you’ll connect those dots read the writin’ on the walls

Woman when I’ve raised hell, heaven knows you’re gonna know it
Don’t make me rule this home with the back of my hand
Just let me sit alone in this chair, my own make believe little throne
Ah Honey and collect the thoughts that’ll help me to stand

Honestly, why can’t you just let it be
And let me quietly drink myself to sleep
I said honestly, it’s not what it appears to be
But only memories that ain’t got shit to do with you

Woman when I’ve raised hell, you’re gonna know it
There won’t be a shadow of doubt in your bright little mind
No pictures left hangin’ only lonely unpainted nails
Ah Honey you’ll connect those dots read the writtin’ on the wall

Woman when I’ve raised hell, there won’t be a star left untouched in your sky
When my lightening crashes across that night
No shadows of doubt or of turnin’ in that questioning’ little mind
Just a burnin’ rekindled truth and one single agonizin’ blinding white light

Cuz honestly, Honey you are the Queen
But you had better leave or I will be forced to be King
So now quietly, without questions or screams
Just gently leave it well enough alone

Woman when I’ve raised hell, you of all people are gonna know it
There’ll be nothin’ not nailed down left unturned in this home
Then your old friend silence will creep back into this pettiest of all places
He’ll ask you again, “Which is better or for worse, livin’ with me or livin’ with all my ghosts?”

Honestly, why can’t you just let it be
And let me quietly drink myself to sleep
Honestly, it’s not what it appears to be
But only memories that ain’t got shit to do with you

Woman when I’ve raised hell, heaven knows you’re gonna know it
There won’t be a shadow of doubt in your bright little mind
No pictures left hangin’ only lonely unpainted nails
Ah Honey you’ll connect those dots read the writin’ on the walls