Lyrical Breakdown

Lyrics are arguably the most important and influential feature of a song, this therefore has required a lot of our attention during the postproduction of our video, including the planning and storyboarding. The lyrics in our song, A-Punk are quite bizarre; they are unconventional lyrics but we feel this will aid us in our mission to produce the conceptive music video that we desire. Below I have posted the lyrics to the song, I have also annotated (in red) what we have thought we might do with the lyrics in the visuals.

Johanna drove slowly into the city

The Hudson River all filled with snow

She spied the ring on His Honor's finger

Oh-oh-oh

(In this opening verse we will need to introduce the characters, we have planned to get an actress to play 'Johanna' we want to do this as she can be a reoccurring feature throughout the video. The video can follow Johanna, starting in a car driving to an urban setting throughout the song as she is involved with the different predicaments.)

A thousand years in one piece of silver

She took it from his lilywhite hand

Showed no fear – she'd seen the thing

In the Young Men's Wing at Sloan-Kettering

(In this verse the lyrics describe locations and actors interacting, this is where we will require more actors, we are trying to get some of our friends from performing arts to act for us as they already have experience of performing infront of a camera. Having four fruit costumes will require four actors, we will be able to re-use these actors in other scenes such as this verse.)

Chorus:

Look outside at the raincoats coming, say OH (x 2)

ey ey ey ey

ey ey ey

(This is the chorus of the song and is repeated again at the end of the song. We plan to have our fruit costumes dancing in time with the rhythm of the song in this scene. This section of music is also the slowest part of the song, at the beginning of the chorus the music really slows down and there is a break in the lyrics. We think that this is a great opportunity for us to slow down the filming using some precise and careful editing.)

His Honor drove southward seeking exotica

Down to the Pueblo huts of New Mexico

Cut his teeth on turquoise harmonicas

Oh-oh-oh

(We want to link our lyrics to the visuals on screen, we already have the abnormal idea of having fruit costumes, in this verse we had the idea that the actors in the costumes would have Mexican themes with them, we have large sombrero hats which can be used as props)

I saw Johanna down in the subway

She took an apartment in Washington Heights

Half of the ring lies here with me

But the other half's at the bottom of the sea

(This verse involves a lot locations, whilst brainstorming we decided that would would use a train station for the 'subway' scene, we will have the same 'Johanna' acting for us, we will use either the local train station or any other subway/underground location that we can use, we will go out location scouting for ideas and will post photos up on our blog to get some feedback)

Chorus:

Look outside at the raincoats coming, say OH (x 4)

ey ey ey

(As I stated before, we will have similar scenes during the two choruses in the song, also the song quickly cuts out on the 'ey ey ey' so I think we will end on a dramatic note on screen as it would reflect the sharp exit of the song)

Ian