AMEN: EXPOSITION OF THE AMEN BROTHER BREAK

Following advice for the crit and the last split screen tests I have decided to try and make the message of the Amen Break piece clearer and add some background, context and exposition to help out the audience understand the piece. My main reticence to this was that I did not want it to be too obvious as I want to try and have the revelation of the piece where the penny drops aurally by listening to the tracks and picking out the same drum beat. However my thinking has changed a little and I do think I can use this device and still get the revelation but it will be a visual one through text or a VO alongside the aural one from the music from the artists.

My aim is to create a narrative and drip feeding the audience information intermittently throughout the piece I can build a story bringing facts to their attention but only once they have all been revealed or for cleverer audiences most of them will these frame the piece for them. There will be revelation from this but also an aural revelation when they HEAR the drum beats in the songs and manage to forge a link between them all.

I am going to try out both a voice over and the text on screen. I favour the latter as feel the VO will conflict too much with the audio and feel the type could be used creatively perhaps with some kinetic typography as long as it is clear and readable and not too fast. The use of both is obviously a tried and trusted documentary technique and by clever use of it will forge another link to blurring the boundaries between documentary, installation and the avant-garde. One of my other objectives in my mission statement was to still put narrative, character and storytelling at the forefront of my work. I feel that the use of the script/exposition I am doing just that. I aim to re-visit the actual Amen break at intervals throughout the piece to reinforce it and to allow for constant comparisons between it and the other music that sampled. This is also to keep giving the audience clues. It is during these re-visits to the actual break that in my opinion will be a natural home for the VO or text exposition.

For my tests of the piece I have been using 9 tracks and music videos for the film. My original intentions were to use 10% of the 2400 tracks that have used the Amen Break. Realising the impossibility of this logistically in the timescale I then aimed for 1% that being 24. However at this late stage and for this test piece I think 16 is realisable in the timescale. I do not want too much text/VO so I am trying to keep it to 5 pieces. These will build to create the narrative, clues to what the piece is all about and also to develop the character of G.C Coleman. I am looking to work the narrative/spine of the piece like this following narrative structure theory of Todov and Labov..

• Intro to G.C. Coleman and his drum solo.
• 4 clips from tracks that have used the Amen Break
• Contextualise the song and the break
• 4 clips from tracks that have used the Amen Break
• The start of sampling of the Amen Break
• 4 clips from tracks that have used the Amen Break
• The far reaching impact of the Amen Break
• 4 clips from tracks that have used the Amen Break
• G.C Coleman's death, obscurity and sad end.

Rough Script First Draft

• In the Spring of 1969 a drummer from a band called the Winston's played a freestyle 6 second drum solo simply to extend a song.
• The drummer was a man called GC Coleman and the song it was from was an insignificant B side called Amen Brother.
• The drum solo became known as the "Amen Break" in the mid 1980's and began to be sampled in Hip Hop records.
• The "Amen Break" has now been sampled over 2400 times inspiring a huge variety of artists from a multitude of genres.
• GC Coleman never received royalties or acclaim for his 6 seconds of creative genius and died a homeless drug addict, homeless and destitute in 2006.

I am going to work on this and aim to try a shorter 4 statement version and to also tighten it to as few words as possible but this is the basic first version.