A little over two months after the release of the music video for her latest single “Body”, local singer/songwriter Ch’An has released a behind-the-scenes video about its making. Posted this past Friday on her YouTube channel, the video was put together by the same team behind the music video itself, Movement Film Collective. At the top of the video, before it really gets to the nitty gritty details of the process of shooting the music video, there are two cheeky title cards that read: “if any of this material seems unclear or chaotic we’ve done our job.”
Featured in the video are behind-the-scenes photographer and gimbal operator Neil C. Marshall, director Clish Gittens, production manager and Ch’An’s manager Mosi Daniel, cinematographer Melanie Grant, assistant director Vonley Smith, editor and colourist Jason A. Russell, co-star Emmanuel Tyson, the song’s producer and production assistant on the music video Denzil “Diggz” Bovell and, of course, Ch’An herself.
One thing that is very evident in the video is that the creatives behind and in front of the camera had an immense amount of fun making the music video.
Watch the music video for “Body” above and check out the behind-the-scenes video below. Find out more about Ch’an on her website www.chanbarbados.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM_EQlqunis
The remainder of this season is going to be so juicy I can’t stand it. This is by far my favourite episode of the season because of the final few minutes and the fact that it made me realise that, slow as it has been so far, it has all been building to something greater and grander and what will hopefully be the most perfect ending to this series that Shonda Rhimes and company could ever come up with. I was a little hesitant coming into this episode because it looked like Liv was finally going to get her comeuppance, but with eight episodes left what could the rest of the season be about if that happened so soon? But man did this episode put those fears to rest and make me so excited to see those final eight episodes.
I didn’t realise how inherently sexist Jake’s “legs open” comment to Mellie was until she pointed it out to him. She was right. Fitz was led around by his penis by Olivia for years and got no retaliation like Mellie did for having feelings for Rashad. It could be argued, though, that Olivia learned from Fitz’s mistake but as I just said, Olivia was looking out for number one so that wasn’t even a factor.
For a second there when Jake went to confront her about ditching work to spend time with her boyfriend, I thought that she was actually sincere. But the second she dropped that glass and the music kicked in it was clear that Olivia had no intention of keeping any of her promises. Having sex with Jake right then was one part her celebrating her victory and one part her keeping him on his leash.
Poor Charlie though. He just got his wife and baby back and now he has to let them go again – temporarily – for the sake of Quinn’s revenge quest. At this point he is the most normal person on this show. All he wants, all he cares about, is going home and starting a family with Quinn. I felt sorry for him being on the outside when it came to taking care of Robin. Quinn and Eli had a rhythm and were working together in raising his child. He just got into the picture and had no idea of how to take care of her. Which is why I was so glad that at the end, as he was saying goodbye, Eli showed him exactly what to do to comfort her when she was fussy. That was so sweet. I feel like Eli sees Robin as his second chance or the granddaughter he always wanted. Maybe both.
This series is going in a direction I didn’t consider and it’s doing that by exploring the murders of Andrews other victims. It took me a while to realise that the entire thing would be dedicated to the Miglins. It is called The Assassination of Gianni Versace and in the last two episodes it focused on him. However, he wasn’t the only person that Andrew murdered and his wasn’t the only family that suffered because of his crimes. So I appreciate it that the show is telling the stories of his other victims. They should be told. And flashing back to them further contextualises why Andrew killed Versace and develops him as a character as well.
I didn’t understand why Andrew did the last part or why he told Lee that he was going to “disgrace him.” He hadn’t done anything of the sort with Versace and humiliation, so far as we’d seen, wasn’t part of his modus operandi. Then I remembered that the reason he was doing this in the first place and going after who he was, was because he was envious of these successful men who made a name for themselves. It’s why he burned Lee’s sketch of the Sky Needle and asked if he’d broken ground or gotten funding yet; it would have been a great achievement for the man to have been behind the tallest building in the world.
I’m still smarting a little bit from the fact that LaWanda was murdered – I mean, that really caught me off guard – and like Anissa and Jennifer’s kidnap storyline not having been dropped between episodes one and two, I’m glad that LaWanda’s murder had an effect outside of last week’s episode. Aside from being the motivating factor that got Jefferson to go back to being Black Lightning, for real, yet another silver lining to her death came about; it mobilised the community.
Surprisingly though, the order to squash the march – and by extension the new sense of hope within the city – didn’t come from Tobias. He has a boss apparently, or at least another criminal with whom he works closely; Lady Eve. And she was the one who told him to. Is she the big bad and not Tobias? She seemed very much like the person in charge in that scene. Just when the show subverted my expectations by killing of Lala early, here they introduced a whole other bad guy into the equation. She’s very well played by Jill Scott as well and she seems to be having fun with the role. I kind of like her.
Speaking of Khalil, I still don’t buy that Jennifer is into him. It may well be the fault of the actress, China Anne McClain, because nothing in her performance as Jennifer makes me feel like she has feelings for him. Or maybe that’s how it’s supposed to come off? There is little to no chemistry between her and Jordan Calloway, who plays Khalil. It felt like he and Jennifer got to the point where they wanted to have sex super fast. They’d only been dating for a week. Not to say that a set period of time has to pass for them to get to that point or anything. It was just…fast.
Last week’s drama between Liz and Brendi K. carried over into this week’s episode. I was really starting to not like Liz with this episode. She seemed like the kooky, fun and bubbly girl in the beginning, but she seems to have a very vindictive, mean spirited-ness about her that is hideous. I’m a little disappointed that that Brendi K. didn’t kick her ass last week. And the fact that Christina of all people was the one that told Liz that she should try to empathise with Brendi K. was just shocking. Still, as much as I dislike Liz right now for what she said to Brendi K., I don’t particularly like Brendi K.
Liz was terrible and made a fool of herself. She overacted even after being told to tone it down. I thought Rhiyan did pretty good, Stacey and Anthony didn’t think so though. She did much better than when she was rehearsing the night before. Or was my judgement skewed because of how awful Liz was? Khrystyana was awesome; she was so natural and believable and you couldn’t even tell that she was embarrassed at all. We didn’t get to see Erin, Kyla, Brendi K. or Sandra. Coura really struggled and never collected herself.
Rhiyan was also having an emotional time back at the house and confessed to hating her body and feelings of inadequacy to Rio and Kyla. I’m starting to feel like Rio is kind of like the “Mom” in the house. Just the person that the girls go to when they are feeling down and need a confidence boost. She did it last week with Brendi K. and she did it again this week with Rhiyan. Again, with reality TV editing it could have been portrayed in an exaggerated way, but still, it was pretty disturbing and hopefully Rhiyan doesn’t have a problem.
I got nothing from Sandra’s performance on set. I can’t tell if she was good or bad, but Drew and B were unhappy so I guess she was the latter. I mean, B literally had to get on set and show her how to pose and that’s not good. Khrystyana’s styling was beautiful, not scary at all and she looked to be doing well. Rhiyan did the same thing repeatedly, seated and standing. Christina really brought it on set this week and did very, very well. I suppose this was her kind of shoot. Kyla looked beautiful and I liked her poses and what she was doing with her face.
For the third time in this episode and the fourth time this season, we saw Liz breaking down crying. Sigh…All of the clips of her crying were taken from the same confessional (she was wearing the same clothing in all of them), but it was aggravating seeing her crying over and over again. Plus, she almost started drama again. Yes, the other girls shouldn’t have been making so much noise so late at night, knowing that their roommates were trying to sleep. However, Liz didn’t need to be so rude when she asked them to keep it down. Telling them to “shut the f**k up” was not the way to go about doing that. And in a Top Model first, she left the house to stay at a hotel.
I don’t think that Erin’s photo was better than Shanice’s, Kyla’s or Rio’s, but alright. I think the three of them should have been called before her. One of the girls that I had pegged for best photo got called first – Khrystyana – so I won’t complain much about the call order. The others were Shanice, Kyla, Liberty and Rio by the way.
I knew it. You knew you it. We all knew it. The clues were all there and this episode just confirmed it. Quinn Perkins…is not dead. I told you she couldn’t be dead! Although for a second there I was kind of worried that I was wrong. Not because it looked like Eli was going to kill her, I knew that he wouldn’t, but I thought that she would die under different circumstances. Which would have just made the fact that Eli spared her sad and that would have been a more heartbreaking way for her to die.
I’m glad Quinn actually got to over hear Olivia calling Eli’s bluff. That she was actually there to witness her playing with her life and that of her unborn child. Liv really didn’t care about Quinn as much as she cared about winning. Plus, she was so arrogant she thought that she had everything under control. And then she didn’t even want to see the body! In that instance it was because she actually thought that Quinn was dead and she was visibly shaken by it. So I could understand her not wanting to see her friend’s lifeless body. Still, from Quinn’s perspective, it was like she couldn’t even care enough to do that.
The person that didn’t survive Quinn giving birth was Eli’s one and only friend, Marvin Heward. I didn’t think that he actually cared about him. I thought that he went up to him at the bar to play him. That his point was getting the employee discount so that anything he purchased from there in the future wouldn’t leave a paper trail that could follow him. I really thought that he was using this man. His buying the gun in Marvin’s name made me sure of my assumption. But he actually considered this guy a friend.
After seeing the first episode of the season my initial thought was that, in the show at least, Andrew had had a relationship with Versace or something and killed him because he was a jilted lover. After all, he was shown to be incredibly obsessed with the man, worked hard to make sure he met and came into contact with him and Antonio did say to the police that he and Versace often brought other men into their bed. It seemed like the show was setting them up to have had a brief dalliance that ended horrifically. But after this episode, that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. And had the FBI done one, simple thing from the very beginning Versace maybe would not have died in the first place.
The FBI agents, Evans and Gruber, told the local Miami police officers, Wieder and Scrimshaw, that Andrew targeted closeted, older, wealthy gay men. Their being wealthy means that they have to have a certain degree of success. His other victims are likely men of the same or similar status as Versace; men that Andrew could have “been”as well. To me it looks like Andrew kills his victims out of envy. Not just because he more or less said that they represent who he would like to be, but also because he later told Ronnie that he’s done nothing all of his life.
It seems that the couple of months that Andrew spent with Ronnie were just one long distraction from his murder plot. I found it so weird that he hung around with him for as long as he did, because it looked like he just talked to him the day he met him to find out where he could best earn money by prostituting himself. And then they started doing drugs together? I don’t know. But he was distracted for so long that the police and the FBI maybe could have found him before he killed Versace. Perhaps that was the point of going into that storyline? In any case, he left Ronnie immediately after he saw Versace on the balcony of his home, so he snapped out of it it seems.
Drama. Again. As if there never is. And this time it’s from Christina. I’m honestly shocked that it took her this long to cause drama in this house – or at least be at the centre of it – considering how she conducted herself during the auditions and what happened there. I still think that people misunderstand her to a certain degree. I mean, she was right that it was rude for Sandra not to apologise after bumping into her. That being said, how she expresses herself is problematic. She comes off very curt and short; like she’s verbally goose necking.
These girls turned it out on set for these videos. The makeovers seemed to have boosted their confidence – except in the case of Brendi K. – and they looked so good, sexy and strong. At least some of them did. As with every shoot there were some girls who just didn’t deliver.
The Barbadian-UK co-production, produced by Lynette Eastmond and Melissa Simmonds and written and directed by Barbadian filmmaker Shakirah Bourne, has received three nominations for the National Film Awards UK. Now in its fourth year, the National Film Awards is, as described on it’s website: “an annual awards ceremony produced by the National Film Academy to celebrate the achievements of established and independent filmmakers , actors , actresses, casting directors, production companies and crew who make up the motion picture industry” and is the only film awards that allows the public to both nominate and vote in all of its a categories.