SPOILER ALERT! Preview For Hedonist Music Video Script - Part 3

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.

The third set is called...

The Padded Cell of Terror and Art Therapy

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.

A digital mock up of "The Padded Cell of Terror and Art Therapy"

A test shot of the set and myself as "The Patient." 

THE PADDED CELL OF TERROR AND ART THERAPY

by JENNY KIRBY

INT: Padded Cell

A dirty worn down padded cell with a female patient curled in the fetal position unconcious in the centre wearing tattered Victorian style lingere. As she awakes from her drug induced stupor she sits up into a cross-legged position and begins to survey her surroundings. She crawls around in an attempt to understand where she is. She stands up and begins to pushes on the pads feeling them and looking for a means of escape.

Panic starts to set in as she realizes that she's trapped an there is no way out. She screams, but no one hears her. She begins to scratch herself on the face, neck and arms as she continues to search for a way out. When it becomes appearant that there is no way out, she falls to her knees and begins screaming to release the fear and rage that has overtaken her body.

She wraps her arms around herself for comfort and stares at the mutilation she's caused herself. She ponders for a moment staring at one of the scratches on her forearm. She runs the tip of her fingernail through the scratch scooping up the blood oozing out of the wound, then licks the blood off the tip of her fingernail. She impulsively bites into the top of her hand tearing a chunk of flesh away. The sensation of the pain endorphins rushing through her veins is almost orgasmic. She dips her fingernail in to the hand wound that is gushing blood and scoops out a liberal amount and begins scrawling the words, "I used to be a good girl, I used to really care" on the walls of the cell.  She continues to use her hand wound as a palette, her blood as paint and her fingernail as her brush while painting the lyrics to Hedonist as a form of art therapy.

As she's painting the last line of the song, two nurses enter. The nurses' job is to prevent the patient from expressing herself so they jump on top of her. One nurse holds the patient down as the other nurse injects the patient's neck with a sedative. The patient now catatonic and complaint allows the nurses to straight jacket her. The nurses lay her down on her back and place a metal gag into her mouth to pry it open. They want to ensure that the patient is never able to express herself again so they pour an entire bottle of liquid suspension type medication down her throat and then shove an entire bottle of pills down her throat.

The nurses satisfied that the patient is sufficiently drugged, leave the cell. The patient is left alone, straight-jacketed in the middle of the cell.

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.

Music Video Pre Production Madness(literally)

One of the benefits and pitfalls of being an indie, diy musician or whatever they're calling it these days is that you get to do pretty much everything yourself. It's a huge workload and things tend to move slowly, but the work itself is rewarding in a way that I can't even adequately describe with words. I'm a multimedia artist and for me the most fun thing I get to do as a musician is make music videos! I get to use literally every artistic and technical discipline I've ever studied or worked in professionally.

Here's a little step by step visual synopsis of what I've done so far production designwise for one of the scenes for my music video Hedonist.

1. First I needed to design the set.

The concept behind this padded cell is that it is a metaphor for the insanity of addiction which is one of the central themes of the song. The insane subject scrawling the lyrics of the song in blood on the walls of the padded cell is a visual representation of my addict brain feeling trapped, isolated and overwhelmed by the world I created for myself through drug and alcohol abuse.

2. Then I had to make the set(this process almost drove ME insane)

This was a multi step process which involved me having to scavenge bike shop recycling bins for enough cardboard to make the backer pieces for 104 cell pads.

 Did I mention that I had to make 104 padded squares?!?! I had to cut 104  21" x 21" squares of card board, then 104 squares of quilt batting, THEN 104 squares of fabric to cover them with

             

 There was glue gunning and a lot of burned finger tips in the assembly process. After making 104 of these damn cell pads I had to apply layers of "grunge" to make them appear weathered, soiled and old. I used a powdered temepera paint to create a worn effect with layers of dust, mildew, hand prints and oxidation.

3. Costumes!!!!

Ever since I was a child, I have loved playing dress-up. Now I get to do it professionally so this is a dream come true. For this particular scene in the music video there is myself dressed as a disgraced Victorian mental patient and some nurses who symbolize the drugs themselves.

Making my Victorian underwear involved not only sewing it, but also adding a layer of "grunge" to match the filthy aesthetic of the padded cell. To keep the color palette consistent I used the same tempera paint to dirty up my lingerie as seen below.

                  

4. Hair, Make-Up and SFX

For the hair I thought it'd be fun to make and install some synthetic dreads as I figured my character would have been locked away for some time and not have access to a hair brush.

 We experimented with a few make-up looks, but finally decided on a combination of what we played around with. 

 

I also made some long fake dirty fingernails to add to the overall effect and also because there will be some close ups of my hands as I bite a wound into my hand and they scrawl bloody lyrics all over the walls.

5. The Test Shoot!!!

If you've managed to read this far down then congratulations because these are the real money shots from the test shoot where we played with some lighting and visual concepts. The hard work is really paying off and I'm very proud of what we've come up with. So enjoy the fruits of our labor so far!

Designing Sets Within A Theme

I am a theme whore! I love theme parties, theme rooms, theme stripper costumes, you name it. If it's got a them, then it's automatically 100x more awesome in my book. Today was spent designing the padded cell set for the Hedonist music videp, but I wanted to experiment with designing with a theme. In this case, the theme is HEDONIST. So, what I did was ask myself, what kind of a padded cell would a hedonist be locked inside? The answer is this one.

The Hedonist's Padded Cell

I'm not too sure yet as to which padded cell design I'll be going with because I really love both concepts. The concept seen below is the padded cell of what I call the broken down lunatic. I love this one because I'm a huge fan of showing the song lyrics being scrawled in blood on the walls of the padded cell a scene in the video. 

The Broken Down Lunatic's Padded Cell

Ugh! So many creative ideas, and it's so hard to choose a direction. What do you think? Which padded cell do you like better?