Acapella bellows horrors of child prostitutes

Inspired by Rock icon Marilyn Manson, this music video is an acapella version of the 80s song, Sweet Dreams, and was shot over two days 
Different scenes from the music video show a young being trafficked and then forced into prostitution.
Different scenes from the music video show a young being trafficked and then forced into prostitution.

BENGALURU: Sweet dreams are made of this. Who am I to disagree?’ are lines that hard Rock lovers would recognise from icon Marilyn Manson’s award winning cover of Sweet Dreams. An acapella version of it has been released, with the theme of child prostitution, carrying the same amount of horror and macabre as the lyrics.A vocalist and music composer by profession, Tanushree Saha dabbles in her own time with recording and mixing of music. As a fan of Marilyn Manson, she experimented with an acapella version of this song originally sung by Eurythmics, that talks about abuse.

“I conceptualised it in myhome studio by adding my ownbeats, electronic sound, cuts and Manson’s guitar. I mixed, processed and mastered it into a non-conventional acapella version. The addition of hard rock was a happy accident,” shares Tanushree, who is trained in hindustani, carnatic, western classical and the various harmonies of acapella music.Filmmaker and chief creative director of Red Polka Productions, Prataya Saha picked this song and wanted to direct an eerie, haunting and dark video, on the lines of the Sucker Punch movie.

“I wanted to do justice to the song when I noticed how the lyrics were dark, where dreams are not so sweet. We wanted an original story and chose child and female prostitution. Women are forced into it and escaping is nearly impossible. This is where the abuse angle comes in,” says Prataya.True to the lyrics that read, ‘Some of them want to use you, some of them want to abuse you’, Prataya says the video is set an unknown brothel, where a school girl played by Tanushree is trafficked and trapped. 

Their pimp or the owner of the brothel is played by Anshulika Kapoor, founder of Red Polka Production who was recently seen in the film Humble Politician Nograj. TV commercial actor Ajay Dutta plays the multi millionaire businessman, looking for a ‘service’. The other two characters are a suppressed in-house slave and a tormented revengeful ghost.

The trailer released earlier this week reveals a fantasy visual with sparse lighting. Tanushree explains, “The message is very real. People who want to get out of prostitution, can’t do so easily as society expects them to. They are trapped, disowned by family, schools and society.”She adds, “Accapella songs usually have a minimum of four singers on stage. This is a recorded version, with all four layers sung by me. The tenor and base elements generally part of accapella construction, is missing, thus making it different.”
This is Prataya’s first music video and he recalls the hectic schedule of shooting for 14 hours at a stretch, over two days.

“We shot it at night in a remote location. The spot was in the middle of a forest or grassland. I wanted to stick to my strength, which is storytelling. If you watch the video without the music, it will actually look like a short film,” Prataya adds.The five-films-old film maker believes this video is unique for two reasons. 

“It is not normal to find bold topics of such maturity and calibre, within the independent film community. There is a lot of bold fashion and makeup gone into it, imitating Manson’s style. Also, it is very rare to have an acapella music video,” he opines.The video released on May 18 under the solo production house Tan Daze, can be viewed on The Big Scope, their online live TV channel partner. 

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The New Indian Express
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