Showing posts with label character design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character design. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

SPOILER ALERT! Preview For Hedonist Music Video Script - Part 4

Today's blog post is Part 3 of a 4 part series where I am giving you a preview of the actual script we'll be using to shoot my upcoming music video Hedonist.

Hedonist the music video has been a huge undertaking. As pleased as I am with my last music video Lapdance Romance, my goal is to make Lapdance Romance look like and idiot compared to Hedonist. Hedonist is going to have 4 sets  with separate action sequences that relate the overall concept of the song visually. I've decided to post the scripts I've written for each set in a 4 part series.

In my first post of this series I revealed the script for The Psychiatrist's Office of  the Mind's Eye. It' lays down the premise and overall concept for the video.

The the second of the sets is what I've called The Padded Cell of Hedonism. The set is where my character goes to escape the pain of being abused, and is a visual metaphor for my character's relationship with hedonism. Hedonism is portrayed as a physical being who rules the world inside the cell and ultimately seduces my character to over indulge in substance use until she becomes an addict.
This set is all about my character "The Patient" coming to the grim realization that she is an addict trapped in a vicious cycle of domestic abuse and substance abuse.

The fourth and final set is simply titled...


The Operating Room




The Operating Room is not only about the abusive relationship between the domestic violence victim and their abuser, but also the abusive relationship between the domestic violence victim and herself. The domestic violence victim uses substance abuse as an escape from the pain of  the violence and through the use of drugs and alcohol creates an alter ego for herself as depicted in the script below.


THE OPERATING ROOM
by JENNY KIRBY

Scene 1
INT: Operating Room
A continuation from the last scene of Little Miss Liquid Courage the patient lays motionless on the operating table. Her chest and head wounds from where she tore off her fake stapled on breasts and hair are gushing blood. Surgeon #1 and Surgeon #2 enter wearing white “Howie coats” and full biohazard masks that hide their identity. Surgeon #1 straps the patient down and places the patients head in the vice grips at the top end of the table. Surgeon #2 pries the patient’s mouth open with a metal mouth speculum, shoves a tube inside the patient’s mouth, then connects the tube to a vodka bottle suspended from an IV stand.

Next to the operating table is a metal tray with surgical instruments and power tools. Surgeon #2 marks 4 circles on the patient’s torso and then hands surgeon #1 a scalpel. Surgeon #1 slices into the patient’s skin dragging the scalpel along the perimeter of the marked circles. Surgeon #1 peels off the circles of cut out skin as Surgeon #2 wipes away the blood leaking out of the incisions.

Surgeon #1 digs into the wound with a pair of surgical tweezers and fishes around inside the wound which causes more blood to begin gushing out. Surgeon #2 uses a sponge to absorb and wipe away the excess blood. Then Surgeon #2 pokes her finger into the wound and pulls out an artery. Surgeon #1 places 2 clamps on the artery and cuts between the two clamps with a pair of scissors. Surgeon #2 lifts the bottom of Surgeon #1’s mask revealing his mouth and wipes the blood off her gloved finger on to his lips. Surgeon #1 licks the blood from his lips and smiles.

SURGEON #1
“Oh! You taste so good”



Scene 2
INT: Operating Room

In the back corner to the left of the operating table sits a cylindrical glass tank with a metal base that is made up of several small piece held together by rivets. Inside the glass tank is a living growing fetus. Several small tubes are connected to the fetus and lead down into the metal base. At the bottom of the metal base are 4 large black tubes that carry nutrients to the fetus and waste away from the fetus.

Surgeon #1 stretches the patient’s circular incisions open and inserts a short metal cylinder with a flared base into each circular incision. The flared base has screw sockets and is positioned just under the skin. The cylindrical portion juts out of the wound and will fit inside the opening of the large black tubes.  
Surgeon #2 is holding a large black tube at the open end and pulls a small catheter type tube from inside. Surgeon #1 pulls the clamped end of an artery out of one of the patient’s incisions as Surgeon #2 inserts the catheter tip into the artery.

After the surgeons have repeated this procedure for all of the catheter tubes, Surgeon #1 attaches the black hose into the circular incisions by placing the opening of the black tube over the metal cylinder jutting out of the incision an screwing the flared opening of the black tubes into the skin and down into the sockets of the flared base of the metal cylinder inside the wound.

The patient’s body now provides nourishment to the growing fetus inside the tank. Surgeon #1 pulls off his mask and reveals his face. He’s a sinister looking man with a sadistic gleam in his eye. Surgeon #2 pulls the mask off her face revealing her identity. She is the patient. She leans in towards Surgeon #2 as if to kiss him.

SURGEON #2
“I need an anesthetic to numb me to you”

Surgeon #2 leans in even closer, nose to nose, lips almost touching. Surgeon #1 is entranced, and doesn’t notice as Surgeon #2 grips his throat tightly with her bloody hand and begins to choke him.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

SPOILER ALERT! Preview For Hedonist Music Video Script - Part 2

Today's blog post is Part 2 of a 4 part series where I am giving you a preview of the actual script we'll be using to shoot my upcoming music video Hedonist.

Hedonist the music video has been a huge undertaking. As pleased as I am with my last music video Lapdance Romance, my goal is to make Lapdance Romance look like and idiot compared to Hedonist. Hedonist is going to have 4 sets  with separate action sequences that relate the overall concept of the song visually. I've decided to post the scripts I've written for each set in a 4 part series.

In my first post of this series I revealed the script for The Psychiatrist's Office of  the Mind's Eye. It' lays down the premise and overall concept for the video. The the second of the sets is what I've called...

The Padded Cell of Hedonism

This set is where my character "The Patient" goes to escape the pain of being abused and forms yet another abusive relationship with "Hedonism."


THE PADDED CELL OF HEDONISM
by JENNY KIRBY


Scene 1

INT: Padded Cell

A shiny red vinyl padded cell with Hedonism, a god-like figure
with glistening silver skin reclining on a chaise lounge wearing
an opulent flowing black and silver brocade silk cloak. He is
visually a combination between the Roman god of wine Bacchus and
Gary Oldman as "old Dracula" from the 1992 film Dracula with a
gothic twist.

At Hedonism's feet is a heavily tatooed shirtless slave boy
fanning him. A female slave enters with a bottle of wine on a
tray. She pours Hedonism a glass of wine and hands it to him.
Hedonism chugs back the entire glass and hands it back to the
female slave.

Hedonism claps his hands summoning two nurses each with a slave
on a leash. The nurses inject the slaves with a drug that has an
aphrodisiac effect. The slaves fall to the floor and begin making
out while Hedonism watches with a satisfied look on his face.


Scene 2

INT: Padded Cell

Hedonism reclines on his chaise lounge as he is fanned by a male
slave at his feet and fed hors d'erves by a female slave.
Hedonism is surrounded by an entourage of hedonists dancing,
drinking and making out with each other.

As his face is being stuffed with food, a female hedonist "The
Hedonist" approches him. She is dressed in what could be
described best as black shiny Victorian fetish wear. Hedonism
motions for her to sit down with him. He summons for his female
slave to bring wine. The female slave pours two glasses of wine
and hands one to Hedonism and one to The Hedonist. The Hedonist and Hedonism clink their glasses as a toast to their union.

Hedonism motions for his male slave to come over and attend to
The Hedonist's every desire. The male slave moves behind The
Hedonist and begins stroking and kissing her neck. The Hedonist
turns her face to the male slave and kisses him passionately. As
they're kissing a nurse enters and straps a collar around The
Hedonist's neck.


Scene 3

INT: Padded Cell

Nurse #1's contorted body is positioned on the chaise lounge.
Nurse #2 has The Hedonist handcuffed with a leash attached to the
collar around her neck. Nurse #2 lays out two lines of a powdered
substance on Nurse #1's contorted body. Nurse #2 snorts a line
off of Nurse #1's body and then commands The Hedonist to do a
line as well. The Hedonist complies.


Saturday, August 2, 2014

Surgery: A Visual Metaphor For Domestic Violence

I'm truly grateful to be able to express myself  as Borg Queen through several different mediums. Right now I'm in the thick of production design for another music video for my upcoming album Sex, Drugs & Shiny Brass Poles. The video in question is for Hedonist, a song about domestic violence. Surgery is the visual I've chosen to convey the profoundly deep violation of being abused by a partner. Much like surgery, the recovery process for abuse can be just as painful as the actual acts of abuse.

Today, I designed the surgeon character for the operating room scenes. I'm still torn between which set design I'm going to use for the operating room. Any feedback would be welcome. Let me know which operating room you like best in the comments section.

The Surgeon Character Design For Hedonist

Victorian Inspired Operating Room Set

Retro Inspired Operating Room Set

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Lapdance Romance Part 2 - A Labor of Love, Persistence and Complete Insanity

Lets Recap
In anticipation of the release of my song/music video/visual masterpiece that is Lapdance Romance I've decided to re-hash my long arduous production journey. To recap, Lapdance Romance was a song and painting that I created for my husband, before he was my husband while we were on a break. I wrote and recorded the original demo back in 2010. You can listen to the original demo it on my Soundcloud profile here.

As mentioned before I tend to think big, and as a product of the MTV generation I decided that I wanted to create an audio-visual masterpiece in the form of a music video that would use the story behind the song and visuals in the painting as it's inspiration. When approached my director friend Arcelia Ocana of Ribbit Ribbit Studios about the project and played her the song, her reply was, "Jenny, we love the song and we want to make you famous!" This is typical Arcelia as she's a bubbling cauldron of positive, creative energy. So hurdle, number one, find a director, was done.

The DYI Insanity Begins
My next big issue was budget. I literally did not have a budget, at all. When Arcelia approached me about this (not so)minor detail I sheepishly mentioned that I don't have a budget, but have no fear because I have connections to talented(and generous) people AND a lot of this is going to be a largely DIY affair on my behalf. My hair brain scheme is that I would be a one woman art department as the video would be based on my art. Her response was, "No problem, we'll make it work. We all love you at Ribbit Ribbit and want to see you succeed."

Having gone to art school for animation and worked as an animator I was well versed in the art of story boarding and making animatics, so I offered to do the basic pre-production work myself and create an animatic for Arcelia to work off of.  I've never made this animatic public before until now, so if you click the link of  "The Lost Lapdance Romance Animatic" you'll be directed to my ultra secret You Tube video that up until now has only been seen by production staff.

Jenny Learns To Work With Others
One of the hardest things for me on collaborative creative projects is giving up control and letting others do their jobs. I saw making this music video as the perfect opportunity to do some personal growth, so when Arcelia approached me, and said that while they(Ribbit Ribbit) loved the animatic, they wanted to bring in a writer to write the script for the video. They wanted to keep the basic story the same, but they just wanted to write it themselves with my input of course. So, I let go and said ok. HUGE step for me.

The writer in question was someone that I had worked with before, Niko Koupanstis a very talented writer and actor that I had the pleasure of working with on a short film of Arcelia's called "Mime Love." He stuck to the basic storyline of whore falls for a client at a brothel while under the influence of absinthe but added some cool twists that served to really amp up the dark and creepy side of things. In Niko's version the whores became dolls that the madame keeps locked in display cases, but my favorite idea of his was that in the absinthe hallucination my character transforms into a cybernetic dominatrix.

His concept really allowed me to get creative with the character designs. As you can see below, the original character design I came up with for the cyber dominatrix and then the final product underneath it is me in my full make-up and costume.
Orginal character design of my cyborg dominatrix alter ego
On set as my cyborg dominatrix character
I guess you could say that the lesson learned here is that it never hurts to allow others to have some input because they might just come up with some pretty cool shit you would have never thought of. So when Arcelia approached me about improving the sound quality of my original recording by hiring a producer to work with, I was definitely less hesitant, but that's another story for another day as the saga of Lapdance Romance continues...