Can't Get You Out of My Mind

See the video==> Can't Get You Out of My Mind

Nancy Plays Hide And Seek…

…and something that looks like Whack-A-Mole (I’m not kidding, see it for yourself!)

Hehe, enough with this clowning around! Second Life burlesque is a serious business! Or so I learnt after my last act, which you can see here: Nancy Does Burlesque

Okay, serious now! Nancy slaps herself. Good.

First, I would like to thank Yummy for filming one of my numbers again. The editing of this video is superb and so well in sync with the music! Cue the applauds… now! I would also like to thank the Academy for… Oh wait, that’s another speech.

Anyway! Nancy slaps herself again. Better.

Yummy asked me to say a few words about this number so I will go with the same structure I followed in my previous rambling, and divide this rant into “idea” and “production”. Let’s start!

About the Idea

First of all… there was no idea with this number. Usually I have a rather clear concept or vision that I want to bring to life, but with this number it was quite the opposite. I was working with another idea (that is still a work in process, by the way) but I felt like I was stuck and gradually I started to loathe the little I had done hitherto (I’m still trying to motivate myself to finish that number… maybe you’ll see a video of it sometime in 2017). So what to do when you hit a wall? Play! (With yourself or any toys you are blessed with…) And boy oh boy did I play or what!

I started to think about different ways you could make an interesting entrance or exit in a show number, and alternatives for walking around the stage (which I’ve done so much that I’m sort of tired of it…) Knowing that the Palette can do pretty much anything, I started to play with the functions and movers and faders and whatnot (read more below).

So the idea sort of grew with the production. I had no clear theme or vision. For a long time it was just dancing on the moving pillars. And then I started to panic that this would be a pretty hollow number, and I kept saying to myself “Okay, you have some cool effects in it, but so what? Unless you want this to be just a Whack-A-Mole game, you better come up with something, you silly… witch!” (Funny note: Until you texture the Palettes, their default colouring is rather… bright, so for the most of the production it did look like a carnival game, with red, blue, and green pillars rising and descending with this little bunny dancing on top of them.)

And then I sat down for a few days and stared at my stage and pretended to think. Finally I decided to go with the witch (my own words “You silly witch!” echoing in the back of my head) idea and since I had been hoarding some pretty mesh mirrors for my new home, I figured I could recycle some of them in the set. And that’s how the Evil Queen/Snow White reference came to be. And still licking my wounds after being called a vain and narcissistic “C U Next Tuesday” by one egoistic and misogynistic wanker, I decided to emphasize the narcissistic aspects of the Queen asking the mirror who’s the fairest of them all. Nothing like self-emancipation, ladies!

Hah. So yes… there really were no great light bulb moments behind this one. It’s pretty production-driven. Which brings us to… (Cue the drums!)

About the Production

As can be derived from the drivel above, this number was more production than idea oriented. In total, I ended up using… tons of Palettes, the main ones being the three pillars that rotated, rose and fell, and the mirrors that got brighter at a few points.

Having used the Palette’s Sit-2-Sit function in my first ever Artiste number I wanted to give it another go, and instead of using it to perform a seamless transition from one surface to another (which I did in the earlier number), I wanted to use it more as an effect. (In short: Sit-2-Sit moves you from one Palette/pose ball to another without you having to stand and sit manually.) Using the Sit-2-Sit as an effect so that you appear in different places on the stage pretty quickly was an idea I had had for a while already. But I never had gotten the chance to use it. So, since this number began as a Palette/Artiste playground, I thought I’d use it now. What the heck, let’s just shove all the unused ideas into one number! And so was born the peek-a-boo section in the beginning of the number. And, as can be guessed, I used Sit-2-Sit to move from one pillar to another.

I want to try something new with every number I do, so I went through the Palette function list and picked a few I thought might work in this number (after all, this was supposed to be a Palette playground) and ended up with the Glow and the Shatter functions. Both were something I had never used before – and I must say they worked pretty well! Glow I used to make my mirrors turn brighter when the song got louder. That was an easy function to use and it worked right away. I recommend that anyone new to the Artiste/Palette start off with these easy-to-use functions, so you can see the fruit of your labour rather quickly. Shatter function I used in the end of the number (when the witch’s delusional self-admiration shatters and she drowns in the darkness she’s created around her, hehee), and I must admit, it was a little scary to try it, since I had no idea how to do it. But after two chats with Yummy and a few hours of intense notecard-editing and prim-creating, I got it to work the way I wanted! All in one day! Yippee!

Okay, ladies and Laramie smokers, I think I’ve typed enough! My head is empty and I can’t think of anything more to say about this number, haha. Congratulations if you got this far and “Aww, I feel you” if you just skipped down here after the first paragraph! I hope you enjoyed the video and come see us live some day!

-Nancy ‘Naughty Martini’ Toocool