Okay, even though this song is from 2015 I only heard this song a week ago along with the film clip and I found it mesmerising and haunting.
2015 UK MVA 'Best Dance Music Video' Winner Milano Film Festival Showcase 2015
The video starts with a cheerleader slumped over in her wrecked car. She gets out and stumbles around in a smoky, deserted parking lot clutching her stomach... I know, thrilling stuff right? Well after that she launches into a powerful dance but not before eventually stumbling into a 1950's classic American style diner looking like she's barely conscious.
She meets another cheerleader in there, they launch into a coordinated dance down the aisle before side ponytail disappears through a side door and braids goes back to stumbling.. this time behind the counter before lurching out the kitchen exit.
The camera pans back into the back kitchen area braids just walked out of and we see a third cheerleader - one with a bob - this one actually beckons us to follow her as she dances gracefully out through the kitchen and eventually jumping out the window. She runs across the parking lot to meet up with all of the cheerleaders - braids and side ponytail are also there but there's two we hadn't seen before - one with two side buns and one with shoulder length hair.
All the cheerleaders begin to dance - the same dance but they're a little out of step with each other or at least at different levels. As the dance progresses, braids looks down and realises she's bleeding from her stomach - then she looks into the camera extremely forlorn as the other cheerleaders vanish into bright, white lights and she's left alone by a pool.
Cut to all five cheerleaders in the car where braids started off - all of them dead.
Braids: Impaled by something in the car, possibly the steering wheel column. It's a little harder to tell with her because she doesn't show her injuries until the very end. We do see she has a nasty bruise/gash across her forehead and a cut lip so she's either gone forward into the dashboard/steering wheel or the side of her door.
Side Ponytail: Long gash on her left arm, the left side of her forehead and chin, smaller gashes on lower right arm as well as a nose bleed and a cut lip. I expect the blown in glass from the driver's side cut her left arm and her head probably smashed into the dashboard.
Bob: Deep looking cut on right side of forehead, possible bruising/graze around nose? Upper chest is covered in blood. Kind of looks like the kind of injury you'd get from a seat belt but there didn't seem to be any seat belts in the car. More than likely she's hit the chair ahead of her which would be chest height as well as hitting her window.
Buns: As mentioned before, she's been thrown forward between the two front seats. She has a horrible gash across her chest, with other cuts across her hairline and the bridge of her nose. Probably showered with glass shards too.
Shoulder Length: She''s got a deep cut on the right side of her cheek along with various blood smears/bruising across her face and shoulders. From the way she's sitting she's smacked her skull on the window.
I kind of like how it's mostly their faces that are bloody and nothing else. That probably sounds like I'm into some messed up stuff but what I mean is - if you came in at some of the parts in the video where the girls are dancing together or if they were not directly in front of the camera, you may not even realise something was wrong. It would have been so easy to sexualise high school teenagers in torn and bloody cheerleading outfits like so many crap horror movies do so I'm glad it didn't go this route. It would have detracted from the bloody stomach wound at the end anyway.
There were some theories and versions that didn't seem right with me and some were interesting and varied
Some people seemed to overthink this video - I know I'm doing a whole blog about it so I probably shouldn't talk - things like how when the girls danced past the empty booths that the upside down empty coffee cups symbolised how their lives were empty/cup had drained which I thought was an interesting thought but a bit of a stretch given that's normally how diners are once the booth is cleaned.
The cheerleaders apparently go to Rydell High, as in the school from Grease (set in 1958) which is in turn a reference to teen idol Bobby Rydell (who had a smash hit in 1960)
Although their outfits aren't as 'conservative' as these, they do sport sport shorts under their skirts. Maybe the school changed designs, especially if this is set 'after' Grease, or perhaps it's summer. Probably isn't a copyright thing because they could have used any old design.
The diner itself, Cadillac Jack's has been used for several shoots - music videos, adverts, movies, TV shows... you name it.
A lot of YouTube comments I saw questioned how the girls died when the car didn't look that worse for wear, stating that older cars were more stable than newer vehicles. Others said this was a myth, so I decided to look a bit into it.
From Road and Track: Evolution of Safety
The first turn signals didn't show up until Buick launched them in 1937. The first front seat belts didn't appear until Tucker installed them in his experimental car in 1948—ditto for the padded dashboard—and these features didn't become common options until the '50s or '60s. Despite millions of avoidable fatalities, mandatory seat belt laws were fought tooth-and-nail by auto manufacturers, and didn't appear until 1984. A similar bout of safety advocacy and industry resistance predated the 1989 front-airbag legislation. Some 300,000 lives have been saved in the past 40 years by these two relatively simple devices.
From The Drive: Vintage Cars are Death Traps
(Talking about a crash the author had in an older vehicle) It's a good thing I was driving in slow traffic. Without headrests – the seat back ends mid-scapula – I would almost certainly have suffered from some form of whiplash in a high speed collision. Bloch talked a lot about fuel tanks and their rearward orientation in pre-Seventies cars. A rear impact could skewer the tank, ripping it open and exposing fuel vapour to sparks from ripping metal.
■ 1930s-1960s: More powerful cars force automakers to improve handling and outward visibility; Automakers vacillate on eliminating protruding interior knobs and handles, which could cause lacerations and impalements in a crash.
■ 1948: Preston Tucker outfits his 50 production cars with padded dashboards, pop-out safety glass and directional lighting (he leaves out seat belts so that potential buyers won't think his car is unsafe).
■ 1950s-1960s: Crash testing becomes more involved.
■ 1950s: Safety belts optional in some American cars, but not many motorists buy or use them.
There were a lot of pointy objects on the dashboards of pre-1980s cars. Many cars of the 1950s had steering-wheel hubs that protruded like missile ends, just waiting to impale the driver. But even as Mercedes was pioneering a collapsible steering column that would debut later in the same decade, all cars of the era had fully rigid columns. Some of those would telescope to a steering box that sat ahead of the front axle, and a head-on collision would drive the column toward the driver
Many early cars didn't have locking doors, door latches opened by pressing downward, and a downward-opening latch often served as an armrest. It was a recipe for catastrophe. Without a seat belt, anyone chilling in the back of a car with rear-swinging doors could easily fall out, especially since the wind would catch the door and blow it open.
Artist : LORN
Title: Acid Rain
Label: Wednesday Sound
2015 UK MVA 'Best Dance Music Video' Winner Milano Film Festival Showcase 2015
SXSW Official Selection 2016
Cast and their respective hairstyles:
Kayla Frails, (braids)
Jacqueline Ann LeWarne, (side ponytail)
Morgan Ceely, (bob)
Emily James, (buns)
Val Rockey (shoulder length)
Lyrics:
Daylight
In bad dreams
In a cool world
Full of cruel things
Hang tight
All you
Nothing like a big bad bridge
To go burning through
The video starts with a cheerleader slumped over in her wrecked car. She gets out and stumbles around in a smoky, deserted parking lot clutching her stomach... I know, thrilling stuff right? Well after that she launches into a powerful dance but not before eventually stumbling into a 1950's classic American style diner looking like she's barely conscious.
The camera pans back into the back kitchen area braids just walked out of and we see a third cheerleader - one with a bob - this one actually beckons us to follow her as she dances gracefully out through the kitchen and eventually jumping out the window. She runs across the parking lot to meet up with all of the cheerleaders - braids and side ponytail are also there but there's two we hadn't seen before - one with two side buns and one with shoulder length hair.
All the cheerleaders begin to dance - the same dance but they're a little out of step with each other or at least at different levels. As the dance progresses, braids looks down and realises she's bleeding from her stomach - then she looks into the camera extremely forlorn as the other cheerleaders vanish into bright, white lights and she's left alone by a pool.
Cut to all five cheerleaders in the car where braids started off - all of them dead.
Things to note:
- when braids leaves the car, the interior is lit with strong white light
- side ponytail is not visible when braids is dancing past the windows outside
- headlights can be seen driving past but there is no one else present - staff or customers - inside the diner or out, even though it's a 24/7 joint. It's also trashed outside, apocalypse style.
- braids swings around a pole - an acid rain parody of Singing in the Rain?
- the jukebox has no songs and the clock in the diner has no hands
- when side ponytail appears it looks like she was trying to eat the cherry off the sundae on the counter
- she's covered in blood and cuts but appears cool about it
- she skips ahead of braids who quickly tires, side ponytail shows a few signs of fatigue but goes into a darkened side door but braids goes towards the lights/serving area
- braids passes by a window into the back room, but cheerleader three is not visible
- the camera whirls around braids and looks directly into the back room but no-one's there
- braids follows directions to the exit
- when we pan back into the back room bob is there, and she looks very dead. She doesn't have as much blood as side ponytail but perhaps being the skinniest, palest one with streaks through her hair, the lighting gives her a hollowed out look about her eyes. We've all seen this in horror movies, right?.
- Unlike braids and side ponytail - bob looks directly at the camera
- She leans back, like she's falling but then begins to do a ballet inspired dance
- Bob beckons to us and we follow her through a darkened room and out the window
- Before she hops out, we can see the other cheerleaders assembling outside
- It's dark, but as they begin to dance bright lights focus on them
- They're all slightly out of step with each other
- During the dance, bob can still be seen looking directly as us while the rest don't acknowledge the camera/us until the last few moments of the dance
- Braids completely falls out of step after realising she's bleeding from her stomach
- The other four finish the dance with a pose
- Braids looks up at us - the camera zooms out on her standing by an empty pool
- all five cheerleaders - dead in the car - are somewhat reminiscent of their last poses in the dance
What's interesting as well is that similar to braid's wounds, hidden from us until the character literally hide them anymore - the car is presented in the same way.
Braids even puts her hand directly on the shards for support - no blood appears and she doesn't seem fazed by what she's doing.
When we first see the car it's damaged but isn't covered in blood. Braids looks like she was able to brace herself on the steering wheel.
When we see it again at the end, you can clearly see blood on the broken shards of glass in the door window frame, smeared on the rear glass, and over the door in the bottom of the frame. Braids doesn't have both hands on the wheel here, looking instead like she's got one hand on the dash and the other by her side.
Obviously we know how braids ended up, we see side ponytail is in the front passenger seat. The rest aren't really clear from the video because it's so dark but the middle passenger (buns) has been thrown forward, her head is down between the two front seats. This behind the scenes photo makes it a bit clearer to see where bob and shoulder length were in the car respectively and it also makes the exterior blood easier to see.
Braids: Impaled by something in the car, possibly the steering wheel column. It's a little harder to tell with her because she doesn't show her injuries until the very end. We do see she has a nasty bruise/gash across her forehead and a cut lip so she's either gone forward into the dashboard/steering wheel or the side of her door.
Side Ponytail: Long gash on her left arm, the left side of her forehead and chin, smaller gashes on lower right arm as well as a nose bleed and a cut lip. I expect the blown in glass from the driver's side cut her left arm and her head probably smashed into the dashboard.
Bob: Deep looking cut on right side of forehead, possible bruising/graze around nose? Upper chest is covered in blood. Kind of looks like the kind of injury you'd get from a seat belt but there didn't seem to be any seat belts in the car. More than likely she's hit the chair ahead of her which would be chest height as well as hitting her window.
Shoulder Length: She''s got a deep cut on the right side of her cheek along with various blood smears/bruising across her face and shoulders. From the way she's sitting she's smacked her skull on the window.
I kind of like how it's mostly their faces that are bloody and nothing else. That probably sounds like I'm into some messed up stuff but what I mean is - if you came in at some of the parts in the video where the girls are dancing together or if they were not directly in front of the camera, you may not even realise something was wrong. It would have been so easy to sexualise high school teenagers in torn and bloody cheerleading outfits like so many crap horror movies do so I'm glad it didn't go this route. It would have detracted from the bloody stomach wound at the end anyway.
There were some theories and versions that didn't seem right with me and some were interesting and varied
Some people seemed to overthink this video - I know I'm doing a whole blog about it so I probably shouldn't talk - things like how when the girls danced past the empty booths that the upside down empty coffee cups symbolised how their lives were empty/cup had drained which I thought was an interesting thought but a bit of a stretch given that's normally how diners are once the booth is cleaned.
Some other people said that braids was pregnant which is why she was clutching her stomach. Maybe? It's possible. Who knows.. but my money's on the gaping flesh wound. Others said she was feeling guilt for killing her friends.. that's not something I would personally do if I felt guilty about anything but you know, maybe. Still others thought that the stumbling around might have meant that they were drunk.
Popular consensus is that the girls all died in the crash. Braids was clinging to life - that's why she had bursts of energy and kept going a different direction to the other girls. The others died first and that's why they - in particular side ponytail and bob moved so fluently because they had already accepted death.
The way the girls all headed off in different directions shows that ultimately we're alone in death. Braids only realised something was really wrong when she noticed the blood. She had been clutching her stomach before, but now it's stark clear what happened to her - hence lifting her head up when before she mostly had it bowed.
Now, other people have said that the pool represented emptiness, and the way that braids was alone meant she wouldn't be joining her friends in heaven she was in hell or purgatory. A few people have theorised that braids may have actually been the only survivor despite her wounds as we see her leave the vehicle, but no one else does. Her pose in the end of the video is different to that of the start, indicating that maybe she could move or was in the process of moving.
Another theory was that the heavy bass drum sound was actually a heart.. it got stronger when they danced but apart from that it was muted or non existent. That one is pretty cool but probably not realistic.
References:
The cheerleaders apparently go to Rydell High, as in the school from Grease (set in 1958) which is in turn a reference to teen idol Bobby Rydell (who had a smash hit in 1960)
Although their outfits aren't as 'conservative' as these, they do sport sport shorts under their skirts. Maybe the school changed designs, especially if this is set 'after' Grease, or perhaps it's summer. Probably isn't a copyright thing because they could have used any old design.
The diner itself, Cadillac Jack's has been used for several shoots - music videos, adverts, movies, TV shows... you name it.
A lot of YouTube comments I saw questioned how the girls died when the car didn't look that worse for wear, stating that older cars were more stable than newer vehicles. Others said this was a myth, so I decided to look a bit into it.
From Road and Track: Evolution of Safety
The first turn signals didn't show up until Buick launched them in 1937. The first front seat belts didn't appear until Tucker installed them in his experimental car in 1948—ditto for the padded dashboard—and these features didn't become common options until the '50s or '60s. Despite millions of avoidable fatalities, mandatory seat belt laws were fought tooth-and-nail by auto manufacturers, and didn't appear until 1984. A similar bout of safety advocacy and industry resistance predated the 1989 front-airbag legislation. Some 300,000 lives have been saved in the past 40 years by these two relatively simple devices.
From The Drive: Vintage Cars are Death Traps
(Talking about a crash the author had in an older vehicle) It's a good thing I was driving in slow traffic. Without headrests – the seat back ends mid-scapula – I would almost certainly have suffered from some form of whiplash in a high speed collision. Bloch talked a lot about fuel tanks and their rearward orientation in pre-Seventies cars. A rear impact could skewer the tank, ripping it open and exposing fuel vapour to sparks from ripping metal.
■ 1930s-1960s: More powerful cars force automakers to improve handling and outward visibility; Automakers vacillate on eliminating protruding interior knobs and handles, which could cause lacerations and impalements in a crash.
■ 1948: Preston Tucker outfits his 50 production cars with padded dashboards, pop-out safety glass and directional lighting (he leaves out seat belts so that potential buyers won't think his car is unsafe).
■ 1950s-1960s: Crash testing becomes more involved.
■ 1950s: Safety belts optional in some American cars, but not many motorists buy or use them.
There were a lot of pointy objects on the dashboards of pre-1980s cars. Many cars of the 1950s had steering-wheel hubs that protruded like missile ends, just waiting to impale the driver. But even as Mercedes was pioneering a collapsible steering column that would debut later in the same decade, all cars of the era had fully rigid columns. Some of those would telescope to a steering box that sat ahead of the front axle, and a head-on collision would drive the column toward the driver
Many early cars didn't have locking doors, door latches opened by pressing downward, and a downward-opening latch often served as an armrest. It was a recipe for catastrophe. Without a seat belt, anyone chilling in the back of a car with rear-swinging doors could easily fall out, especially since the wind would catch the door and blow it open.
A comment on acid rain - I have misplaced the source for this one.
Acid rain" is a popular term referring to the deposition of a mixture from wet (rain, snow, sleet, fog, cloudwater, and dew)and dry (acidifying particles and gases) acidic components
Since dry deposition typically represents over half of the alkaline payload and we could see a low fog and clouds throughout the video, I'd say this is a common variation especially due to the fog's descent acting only to sweep down lingering dry particulates and the suspended sulphur dioxide gas. (the gas apparently lingers heavily about right below typical rain droplet formation elevation)
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