Musical Selection #1
Eruption
Van Halen
[From the album Van Halen (1978)]
[Warner Bros.]
Musical Selection #3
We Will Rock You
Queen
[From the album News Of The World (1977)]
[EMI/Elektra]
Musical Selection #4
We Are The Champions
Queen
[From the album News Of The World (1977)]
[EMI/Elektra]
Musical Selection #2
Now I Let Go
Moby
[From the album Animal Rights (1996)]
[Elektra]
ENTIRE CONCEPTUAL MUSIC VIDEO MUSIC VIDEO ONLY
PRODUCTION NOTES
Spring, 2007: Having completed principal photography on the epic Tuesday Night Prods. short SPARC WARS at the end of the Fall 2006 semester, the follow-up projects for the next semester entailed the creation of a SPARC WARS EPK/documentary and—on a completely different tangent—a music video of a song chosen by the class. Upon agreement between Youssef, fellow instructor Chris and the students, the seminal Queen song We Will Rock You (1977) was chosen both for its awesome rock anthem status as well as its subtextual message—i.e. “We” (the special needs students) “Will Rock You” (amaze, surprise, exceed expectations).
The job for Youssef was to now come up with a concept that would meld visuals with the music as well showcase many of the students acting in front of the camera lens. Feeling rather artistically pretentious, Youssef came up with a music video concept that combined a story with the subsequent music video itself—ala Michael Jackson’s epic Thriller mini-movie or David Bowie’s Blue Jean short film. Since principal photography was to be performed during the Tuesday evening class at Yorktown High School (Westchester County, NY), it was easy enough to concoct the first half of the concept video that would segue into the song proper:
PART I
The setting is a high school detention room—lensed in glorious B&W and edited in longer takes to evoke the cold bleakness of Ingmar Bergman films. The musical choice for this portion (Moby’s Now I Let Go) personifies the bleakness and boredom of detention. Each student was given a different role (bookworm, genius, slacker, rebel, etc.) while the stern proctor—played by the rather affable Curt Schulman (a gentleman and a scholar)—lords over his student lieges behind the pages of a newspaper…his boredom quite apparent as well.
Sound FX emerge as each character is assigned a sound signature (if you will). Most amusing is the sound of crickets playing when a shot of the Sleeping Girl appears. The point is driven home: detention is boring! The mournful Moby piece fades as the sudden sonic screeching of a guitar cuts through the sequence in a most intrusive manner. The musical piece—Van Halen’s classic Eruption—does the trick of waking everybody up…on the screen as well as the viewer!
Into this order comes chaos; into this bleakness comes the rebel Dave—wearing Youssef’s sunglasses & leather jacket, by the way—sneering as he enters the room. Making his way to his desk, he leaves a swath of annoyance behind him…to a point where even the stern teacher gives him the ol’ stink eye.
PART II
The introduction the music video proper includes a cut to the seated Dan, who—in the process of tapping on his desk—immediately causes Queen’s We Will Rock You to cue up. The bleak, Bergman-esque B&W schema bleeds into a rich, Technicolor-like palette that personifies the introduction of Life into the aforementioned bleakness—all the while edited (at a quicker pace) to the beat. The singing portion was taped with live music playing through a boombox system.
Each character is allowed their moment to succumb to the good vibrations…their spiritual awakening, if you will. Even the Sleeping Girl manages to jump up on the teacher’s desk and wail out a guitar solo! Once the song ends, the musical selection morphs into the other seminal Queen song We Are The Champions (1977)—a soothing but powerful ode to courage, strength & victory. Again, nebulous concepts that Youssef had hoped to evoke through the quiet strengths of his pupils and their budding acting abilities.
TECHINCAL FACETS
As aforementioned, a combination of B&W and color palettes was utilized—and all captured via Youssef’s trusty Sony DCR-TRV950 miniDV camera. The entire project was lensed in a 16x9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio—a departure for the ‘Scope-loving multi-hyphenate, who preferred the 2.20:1 or 2.40:1 aspect ratios. But in this case, it just felt right!
The miniDV footage was digitized into Youssef’s Apple Macintosh G4 tower with Final Cut Pro as the editing system for cutting, graphics and titles. The non-diegetic music of the conceptual B&W portion was added to the mix at the pre-selected sections of the final edit while the diegetic Queen song We Will Rock You synced with Dave’s on-set singing in perfect unison. Outputs were done for DVD distribution as well as compressed video versions for the internet.
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