This site was originally set up as a favor to some members of the band. Now that the contest is over, it will serve as a place for us to show friends and family members our accomplishment. It is to show our hope. Rock and Roll, Jeremy Lassetter Song Lyrics Line-by-line Treatment Analysis Making the Video Credits Contact Song Lyrics "Hold Me Now" The Polyphonic Spree, © 2004 He started the day with a mood and a shake. He was finally arranged. And someone said with a cold, hard chest, You"re a mess! He woke up at nights. He thought he was twice. He was moving away c"ause everyone thinks that it goes away with age. Hold me now. Don"t start shaking. You keep me safe. Don"t ever think you"re the only one when times are tough in your new age. You better be cool at the time. He"s walking along with his soul in his lungs. Ya stare at him long you can find a new song. Everyone thinks they"ve got a new phrase. But you’re still miles away. You"re still miles away. I said, You"re still miles away. Hold me now. Don"t start shaking. You keep me safe. Don"t ever think you"re the only one when times are tough in your new age. Top Line by Line analysis: I felt very connected to this song the first time I heard it. There is a certain stream of consciousness to it as it offers what appears to be a tangible visual statement and then will "resolve" that statement with something more metaphorical. I submitted a video to the contest and in writing the treatment I really wanted to incorporate both the reality based situation lyrics (started the day with a mood and a shake) with the more metaphorical (he was finally arranged & He thought he was twice) I wanted to use the lyrics to hopscotch back and forth between visuals you can understand and a storyline that you can interpret and connect with. There are a few story lines going on in the story. The outline for the action is based on a piece of the Theory of Relativity entitled the twin paradox. It deals with the issue of travel at relativistic speeds and how time is affected at speeds that fast. The other main element of the treatment is this issue of a person having a conflict. He feels that, due to past traumas, that the past is due to repeat itself. In order to protect himself from further hurt, he decides to give up hope. He loses his love/hope/however you interpret it to live a "safer" life on his own terms. He realizes that by trying to avoid getting hurt, he is just causing himself more distress and ends up at an emotional crossroads. In the end, hope finds a way and returns to the character. No matter how much time passes, how long ago you lost something or how old you have gotten, hope and love can return. He started the day with a mood and a shake. Literally, my character wakes up to a buzzing alarm clock which jolts him from his implied nightmare involving a previous trauma or hurt. In this early am hour, he groggily falls back asleep. He was finally arranged. I actually think that this line is sequentially out of order. Sometimes in stream of consciousness, you hit the answer before you hit the question. It can be a haphazard way of realizing yourself, but the info is still all there. In my mind this is the resolution to the next line (Someone said with a cold hard chest...) I took this to imply that some sort of decision was made. Weighing past occurances against a fear of the past repeating itself, his affairs need to be in order. But they won"t until he is proactive. Avoiding the issue no longer, He¹s decided to separate himself from the hurt. And someone said with a cold, hard chest, Youre a mess. This is the rest of the world knocking at his door to say, "man you are a mess. Do something, shape up, or ship out. Get it together. Get a plan and get better." It could even be his own self saying, man ­ the depression has gotten bad, you"ve got to do something. He woke up at nights. Literally, nightmares. My nightmares usually come in a form that is the worst case scenario of real life events that either happened, could happen or that I fear will happen. Here my character dives back into a dream sequence. He thought he was twice. In my video, I decided for this line to be the character"s traumatic breaking point. He can"t take it any longer and he decides to separate himself with the hurt/lost love/lost hope/issue. This metaphorical line causes my character to "dream himself a twin" ­ ie. he splits apart from that piece of himself therefore giving up the hope/love that was causing him such pain. The newly formed twin is the manifestation of this denial. He was moving away The twin is dragged away by some invisible force (the character"s will to push away the hurt). cause everyone thinks that it goes away with age. "Time heals all wounds" ­ as they say... I"ve never been a fan of that phrase. CHORUS During the choruses I really wanted to advance the story line. With the verses I wanted to get specific and develop the characters, but the chorus needed to add movement and set the stage for the next scene. The first chorus has the twin being rocketed into space whizzing past planets, stars, then galaxies and nebulae. I"ve always been really excited by space so it was great to use this in the story. I wanted to show that not only did the character decide to bury his emotions he buried them deep. The further in space the deeper he buried his feelings. He"s walking along with his soul in his lungs. I thought this was a great poetic line playing off of how it feels to have a lump in your throat. So instead of walking along with a lump in your throat, this is a much deeper statement. Plus, with the way that Tim sings and performs, you really get the feeling that he has his soul right there in his lungs, and all that singing exhales this positivity over the audience. In the video I took it to show how my character would act when he was restless with a huge lump in his throat over the separation of himself and the twin. Also, we are back in reality now, having exited the dream world, he is trying to figure out if the dream was real or not. Ya stare at him long you can find a new song. For visual purposes, I pictured the character staring at himself in the mirror, reflecting inward to see if this was really the best choice to make. Having ejected that hope, is it really better to be calloused and alone? Everyone thinks they"ve got a new phrase. It seems in life, everyone"s got a suggestion for what you should do in a situation when it all really just comes down to your own decisions. I thought it would be funny to have the character read a self-help book about deciphering dreams from reality. It is him feeling helpless and confused and searching for answers ­ a solution. But you"re still miles away. You"re still miles away. I said, You"re still miles away. Well, by this time the twin is miles away, speeding off near the speed of light in the rocket. Seeing the shooting star reminds the character of his twin and his lost hope. Chorus 2 The interplay between the character and his twin (his emotion) is reinforced here. The emotion finally breaks and our character and twin both break down. They are overcome with sadness without each other. The character realizes he cannot live without hope and hope (the twin) cannot survive without the character. They need each other. I wanted to break from the sadness and tears with a lighthearted moment. We mulled over a bunch of ideas and ultimately went with the character going to the mailbox to see if anyone cared. Maybe the twin sent him a message. However, the mailbox is empty and in fact no one has attempted to reach the character in quite a while. There are cobwebs. He"s been very alone, but at least he and the spider and a nice chuckle ­ albeit an uncomfortable one. It shows the character is regaining a bit of his sense and can laugh at his lonliness. There may be hope... At the very end of the chorus I do a bit of foreshadowing by showing the controls. Breakdown Then after all the honesty and tears have been admitted, tradgedy happens. Then rocket breaks down. The engines go off and there is a real sense of despair for the twin. He has reached the bottom. In the last moment of desperation and determination, the twin has an epiphany on how to return. His tear falls on a button, which triggers the thought to just start throwing the controls. This is a last ditch effort and it works! The engines fire up and he zooms home! Last Chorus and resolution I needed to bring resolution to the story. The bear zooms again at near light speed and makes it back home. Due to the travel at near relativistic speeds, the twin doesn"t age at all but the character has aged noticeably. Here is the big moment. The twin nervously knocks on the door... As the character emerges, he is much older now. Could it be.. could it be... you? It is! They recognize each other and joyously share a good cry and embrace. The world he left has now changed. The depressing cement buildings have now been replaced by beautiful wildlife. Life is better now that they are reunited. I thought that the very end of the song was VERY important. The jangly strings and ending of the song suggests that while there is a resolution there is also something potentially unsettling in the air. Even though there is a rainbow unfolding, I wanted to leave the viewer with the sense that; although the ending was happy, a happy ending does not necessarily mean "happily ever after". Life will have its ups and downs. You just have to learn to celebrate hope. Hold me now Rock and Roll, Jeremy Lassetter Top Making the Video: Making this video was a whirlwind process. Reading NME.com one day I found that the Polyphonic Spree were holding a video contest. The only downside: we had found out about it two weeks into the month long contest. I searched the band"s website to find the song and in the meantime, got distracted with the Quest for the Rest game. By the time I found the contest site I was in the perfect "Polyphonic Spree" state of mind. I played the song. Immediately the story and images started coming to me. I even felt the emotion of the song connecting with my own inner worries of the time. I"ll even admit to getting a little teary. I play and write music as well. I have for years and the only sort of moment this compares to is a perfect songwriting moment where the entire music and lyrics for a song come to you in about five or ten minutes. That"s what happened here. I wrote the treatment in 10 minutes and called my roommate and my girlfriend. I woke them both up, told them about idea and they were on board. I spent the next two days solidifying the treatment, securing the materials and buying more RAM for my G4. I needed to hot rod this thing to make it work in two weeks. I discussed with my two art directors the look and feel that I wanted and they came up with the brilliant idea of watercolors. Everything you see in the video is a result of cutout pieces of watercolor paper painted by Kris Hatch and Diana Murphy. They designed the beautiful look and feel to the video. It is exactly what I hoped for. I digitized everything using a scanner and touched up the elements using Photoshop. The entire rest of the project would be done in After Effects. Character assembly, character animation, scene animation and editing were all strictly timed in after effects. Because of the rushed nature of the project, I couldn"t be bouncing back and forth between after effects for animation and Final Cut Pro for editing. The girls went into overdrive producing all the elements while I sat in the next room animating. It was not unusual to hear me yell out from my chair, "Hows that house coming, I need more hills, Can you make some more nebulae?" Many late nights spent after my normal day-job ended resulted in what you see here. It was two weeks worth of nonstop panic. We were exhausted, we were awed, and it was so exciting. For those of you who care, what you see now is not the "directors cut". It is the contest version, You are seeing exactly what Tim and the Spree saw. Because the production was so rushed, there are elements that had to be left out. (I was rendering that last day all through the night and until 6 am in the morning.) We simply ran out of time to do it the way we originally envisioned. In the time since, we have created some of the missing elements and reanimated some of the scenes. If you care to see a director"s cut, contact me personally to let me know and I will work on getting it posted. I would like to personally thank Diana Murphy and Kris Hatch for their ultimate devotion to the project. No one got paid for this as we were not the winner of the contest, but they put just as much heart and time into this video as I did. For that I am so very grateful and inspired. And with huge smiles, we are all very proud of our video. Best of wishes. Rock and Roll, Jeremy Lassetter Top Credits: Director: Jeremy Lassetter Art Designers: Diana Murphy and Kris Hatch Video Length: 4:02 Production Schedule: Two weeks. June 30 through July 14, 2004 Made on an Apple G4 933mhz computer using Photoshop and After Effects. Top Contact: Jeremy Lassetter Top