A Tribute To The Rocky Horror Picture Show
In 2020 I realised my dream to be in a cult classic musical like Rocky Horror Picture Show. I am in love with the whole concept of this piece and grew up with Richard O’Brien’s quirky and unique style of entertainment feeding into my subconscious from an early age. He made Crystal Maze a must watch in our family home and in my teens seeing my parents getting dressed up to attend his live show I was instantly overjoyed with the whole idea and went on to fall in love with the film and the live show. It was just such a contrast to anything I’d now describe as mainstream and it inspired the rebel in me.
So one day in August 2020 during UK Lockdown Glen stumbled into the living room to find me living my best life pinning a golden tinsel curtain (I’d bought for 50p from the car boot 2 years prior) up onto the wall.
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The TIME WARP LIPSYNC – MY INTERPRETATION OF Magenta, Riff Raff, Columbia and The Narrator
I thrust the phone into his hand and demanded ‘film this.’ I eventually stopped bothering Glen who was also working from home at the time and crafted a ‘stand’; out of a broom threaded through a dining chair with an art easel and elastic bands to hold the camera in place as I went on to create three more characters.
I had wanted to lay the music over with accompanying musicians but at the time hadn’t had enough musicians on board, hence the lip sync…. BUT, I was so happy with the content I had created I decided to edit it as a lip sync to the original soundtrack instead. It took the whole summer as I made it using editing software that only allowed for two videos to be layered at a time, and as much as I loved the song there was only so much Glen can put up with in one evening as I insisted on not wearing my headphones. The project took a relaxed 2 months to complete and I used the signature glitches and transmission effects that I’d initially put over ‘Science Fiction’ so both pieces really influenced one another.
Song Credits: The Rocky Horror Picture Show ‘The Time Warp’ – Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, Richard O’Brien.
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SCIENCE FICTION – Singing and performing in my own video edit with musical accompaniment and production by Mick Roots.
On the 29th October 2020 I decided that I really should record the vocals for ‘Science Fiction’, a song I had performed at a few open mic nights previously and loved the idea of switching from low to high range. On the 30th of October 2020 I decided that the moment was right and my Dad recorded me there and then in one take. I went out for dinner and by the time I’d got home he had uploaded an edited version of the song to the the cloud. Later that night he added the keyboard effects and I was blown away at how quickly we had thrown this piece together and just how brilliant it was with the simple effects I had also achieved on the video edit; using my iphone6s. I got it up in time for the season’s celebrations and was inspired to keep producing more pieces like this. It felt amazing to perform something that made my heart race and put a huge smile on my face.
