Marionette Project, "Alter Ego", Herron School of Art at IUPUI, Indianapolis, IN

This is a project I've been working on for the past 7 weeks (the marionette, not the crappy video). The project was to create a self portrait marionette as our alter ego. As I have struggled with who I should be, musician or artist, I thought it appropriate to show my art school people my musician side.

The marionette's name is Vincent Saint Fox, a really dumb name I thought of when I was younger dreaming about being a rock star. I thought it sounded like a really cool stage name. Vincent is a half life-size version of me. Measurements were taken to ensure that every proportion was exactly half size, with one exception, his hands. These were created slightly larger because it is the guitarist's hands that were always my focus. Even on a stage filled with other musicians, expensive lighting, and pyrotechnics, the guitarist's hands were the only things I ever had interest in watching.

The music is "Lenny" by Stevie Ray Vaughn, one of my favorite guitarists of all time. In many ways I have tried to emulate what he did on guitar. I even bought a guitar for myself that looks very similar to his. The guitar that the marionette is holding is a duplicate of my own. The expression Vincent is holding (hard to see in the video unfortunately) was inspired by a poster of Stevie Ray Vaughn that I used to have. Basically, you could imagine a guitarist playing his solo and hitting that perfect note. His face becomes contorted in a way that makes him look like he has one hell of an ulcer. I duplicated this expression on my own, rather Vincent's, face. So, being an alter ego project, this marionette is a copy of me, who is a copy of Stevie Ray Vaughn as well.

Our class needed to present this project for a final critique and that is the purpose of this video. I chose to present Vincent live and demonstrate how he could be manipulated, air this music video (muted), and also perform this song, "Lenny" simultaneously; thus, a trio of facsimiles was shown.

In this video, you see a typical kind of scene for a music video: a guy down in the dumps sitting on some steps preoccupied with something that must be horribly depressing, then continuing to a bar that seems to be calling him by name. It then continues with some rather average shots of him playing his guitar with some photogenic flare. Well, that was the intention anyway. Enjoy!

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Stevie
• Ray
• Vaughn
• Lenny
• Texas
• Flood
• Alter
• Ego
• Marionette
• Herron
• Art
• School
• Project
• Guitar