THE "PERFORMANCE" VIDEO

This concept is performance-driven. GREG and THE BAND are front and center. Much like the videos I was sent to review, (including the Ruby video) this concept would present a thrilling performance that is visual and evocative of the range of emotions that I experience when I listen to this song. Unlike the Ruby video, "Somethin' Hot" should have a real EDGE. It should be sexual and dangerous.

With this in mind, I've built this concept around two graphic elements: shape and color.

Shape. A circle. Like a peephole or peepshow. The song feels very sexual to me, and I would like for the circle to represent our view of something that may be too hot or sexual for us to see. The circle holds the part of the image that we can see, just outside the circle is the part that is forbidden. A man kisses a woman's bare stomach. Two hands are tied. A child's tiny hands hold a shiny toy gun. The image in the circle moves as the camera tracks across its subject.

Color. Many of the images inside the circles would be tinted with bright colors: red, yellow, orange. The hot, sexual colors.

To illustrate these ideas, I am appending a few items to this concept. ATTACHMENT A is the cover from the book, Pornocopia. The circles and colors are used here to great effect. By honing in on details from pictures, the artist is able to say a lot about passion, sex and voyeurism. ATTACHMENT B is several pages from a collection of Gilbert & George collages. I love the way color and black and white are used together.

There would be three layers to the video:
(1) A circle (or circles) framed in black. Inside, we see a variety of arresting and evocative images. (More about the images themselves below.)
(2) The band's performance. Shot in a studio. Sometimes we'd see them full-frame, and sometimes we'd see them inside one of the circles.
(3) Projected or superimposed images behind the band. We'd build a simple set for the band's performance. There would be three circles framing the band. We would either project images onto or superimpose images into the circles.

The Images. Obviously, this idea only works if we get a great performance from the Band, (which I know we will) and if we find GREAT images. I want to see sex. The forbidden fruit. Black music and culture. I want to see the normally unseen details of everyday life, as well as historical images evoking 1965. Some images should be dark and disturbing. Others bright and passionate. Different sides of life...together: love and hate, war and peace, past and present, white and African-American. Stylistically, the images should represent this same amalgam: color and black and white, historical and contemporary, original and archival. Short, long and normal lenses.

Maybe the images tell some sort of loose stream of consciousness story. Maybe they don't tell a story at all. Just impressions.

To save money, I can shoot some of the black and white verite stuff myself. I even think that we should shoot a little bit of infrared stock, which I think would go with the song beautifully.

I have written a treatment to give you some sense of what this might look like, but it would not work to script the video to the minute degree before finding the images. I can say this: we should get great coverage of the PERFORMANCE and then cut fast and often between the three layers. The movement should never stop.

THE "PERFORMANCE" TREATMENT

INTRO:
Fade up to a big circle framed in black. An eye fills the circle. It is closed. The image is tinted red. We hear a match being struck (at the beginning of the song). In sync with this sound, the eye opens slowly.

VERSE I:
As GREG begins to sing, "I got your phone number, baby," we see two circles, the eye on the left and THE BAND on the right.

Cut to THE BAND playing in front of three circular screens. Images are projected or superimposed onto the screens behind THE BAND.

We intercut between full frame shots of the band, the circle or circles in the screen and the projected images behind the band.

Inside the circles behind the band, a man is kissing a woman. Shot with a telephoto lens, the circle tilts down their naked bodies. We don't see anything too graphic, but we definitely see skin on skin.

As the piano comes in, we see our first images from 1965. An aerial view of bombs hitting North Vietnam. The Watts riots. A black woman dances in a Harlem nightclub.

CHORUS I:
Match cut from images in circles to THE BAND full-frame with the same image behind them. THE WHIGS are really beginning to rock.

VERSE II:
A tree is cut and falls slowly to earth. We see extreme close-up details of two women. They are cheek to cheek. The camera lingers for a beat. A watchful eye is layered into the hazy white sky above a lone tree in a meadow. The eye blinks.

CHORUS II:
Cut to full-frame of THE BAND ripping into the chorus. Fast cuts between the PERFORMANCE full-frame and the images inside the circles. GREG literally screams into a wide angle lens. Behind him, we see an image of GREG in the bleachers watching a football game.

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK:
One circle. A cigarette is lit. Two circles: An x-ray of a man smoking; a cloudy mist fills his lungs. RICK'S guitar fills one of the circles. A scarlet letter "A" fills the other. Intercut with PERFORMANCE. Another mysterious face.

LAST CHORUS:
We return to THE BAND full-frame with images of blood shot through a microscope on the screens behind them.

ENDING:
GREG raises and opens his hand. The red eye image is projected ont his hand. As they eye closes, GREG slowly closes his hand.

Slow pull out to reveal nine circles, in a three-by-three square. One by one, they are filled by the colored eyes.

Fade to black.
SOME EXAMPLES OF IMAGES

description
some black and white, some color
maybe some infrared
some are threatening
we zoom in to details
some we shoot, some is found or archival footage
we add a layer of bright color to some of the images
examples
the reflection of someone's face in a hand-held mirror
two women with their faces pressed close together (see Man Ray photo)
mundane, but disturbing video images (see Bill Viola)
a car being blown up
television monitors with some of our images
two kids wrestling in some mud
a scarlet letter A
a young street hustler
an eye layered into a white hazy sky above a tree
colored dyes filling a fish tank
a solider is shot and his gun flies from his hand
a falling person (or the suicide jumper in the Warhol painting)
a cigarette being lit
ecu of a match being struck
two people kissing/groping
two hands tied
a woman putting on lipstick
a man kisses a woman's bare stomach
a woman's mouth
a man throws up (shot on infrared film)
a mysterious lined face (see Tim Gidal photo)
a child holds a shiny gun in his tiny hands
Harlem at night
band in a late night club
open mic
women go-go dancing or stripping shot in black and white
eye blinks
a bullet being fired from a gun
a baseball player throws a ball in slow motion
Chuck Berry (guitar)
Little Richard detail (hair)
a nail is driven into a board
x-ray of someone smoking
ecu of blood through microscope
riot/scuffle
ambulance driving through night
Historical/Archival Images from 1965
the Vietnam War (the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam in this year and the first U.S. combat
troops arrived in Vietnam in that year.)
the March on Selma
the assassination of Malcolm X
the Watts riots
the cigarette label: "Caution: cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health." (created in 1965)
Timothy Leary advises us to "drop out, turn on, tune in"
Op Art (Vasarely, Riley, Albers, Bleckner, Goldstein)
miniskirts
German astronauts
Bob Dylan's 1965 England tour (Don't Look Back)
Help
Night life in Harlem and other African-American night spots

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