THe Challenge

Arwen wrote a song about the historical figure of Calamity Jane and the song is an analysis of her character with the goal of demystifying all the stories surrounding her tragic life. Arwen came to me with the challenge of creating a visual story to promote her new song.

The Process

Arwen came to me with this idea for a music video that would tell Calamity Jane’s story through three characters wandering the remains of an old ghost town: The Victorian, the Actress, and the Biker Girl. These characters would serve to tell the story of Calamity Jane throughout different eras, and bring the story to a new modern era at the end with the Biker Girl. Showcasing that these issues and problems are universal.

The challenge was how to translate that story into a visual aesthetic for the film. It was really important to make sure the visual language was all in service of the story. Through many discussions, the idea came up that each character should have her own color grade, aspect ratio, and aesthetic. Just as the story is going through time, the aesthetics are going through time. The film goes from an old sepia tone, to the technicolor of the 1940-50s, and finally to a sleek black & white of the 1980-90s. As the story goes through time, so do the filmmaking techniques.

When it came to Arwen’s performance we were always asking the question for each of the three characters how that character would interact and view the ghost town. For every take we asked that question. In what ways are their actions similar and different to the other characters of the music video. This helped create a subtle nuance between each character as you view the film and deepens your experience.

Finally, when it came to editing the film we went through many iterations trying to determine which sequence of shots best told the story. The sequencing of shots and the inclusion or exclusion of various shots has a huge affect on how you view the story. In initial edits, Arwen felt that the actress character was too genuinely happy throughout her segment of the film. Therefore, we cut shots and changed them to shots that evoked more of a feeling of a hidden sadness. Which created a much deeper and fully fleshed out character.

The Result

By the end, Arwen could use this film to promote her music in a highly professional manner, and helped promote her brand as an artist. This project was a pleasure to work on with Arwen and was an incredible collaboration. We are very proud to share this film.