how to make jamaican documentary

How to Make a Jamaican Music Video

First there must be children. But take heed: all children are not the

same. There are some who touch strange things like books and remain

indoors. These children may be white, red, yellow, mulatto or black in

a white kind of way. Please refrain from employing that sort of

animal. Many other children are available, far more pleasing to the

video camera. Dark like Marassa and Midnight, with big bellies, still

growing teeth, blue school uniforms (with blue tie-the-pig ribbons!).

If possible, please make sure they are barefooted and this is crucial

people, they must always be smiling. This is essential for the behind

the scenes special where the star can grab his chest and remark how

with all these hardships surrounding them these children are always

smiling, always happy. That way you can be like Anderson Cooper in

Africa! Please rehearse this line, for if references to inexplicably

happy Negro children are not made, said video will seem exploitative.

Your audience will never believe that you have been transformed as a

person until you break down at the sight of smiling blackies.

Your local crew must come from a smattering of variably coloured

well-spoken semi-Negroes who are quick to point out their Italian,

French, Scottish, or Cherokee blood. Not Irish for everybody knows

Irish people are just Negroes turned inside out. They should have

traveled widely, listen to groundbreaking acts like James Taylor and

Creed and should be able to reassure you that they know every hoodlum

in the ghetto and go there all the time. Please bear in mind that

these men and women only go to the ghetto with a film crew and 1000 US

dollars in hand, but don't let that trouble you. Ghetto people are

just people, except that they are from the ghetto.

Now comes your cast. School girls in dark blue uniforms are a must but

so too are children who do not seem to go to school, especially if you

are shooting on what is clearly a school day. Their purpose is the run

behind your vehicle screaming and laughing. Nobody scowls in the

ghetto. The sidewalk must be taken up with five to ten men, preferable

old and playing dominoes. You must get the action right. Make sure you

zoom in to a medium shot just as the winning Negro rises and slams the

winning domino on the table, breaking the table in two. Next pan

upwards to the cute ghetto girls looking out their window, pan back

down to catch more ghetto kids running and smiling then scoot the

dolly over to catch the Granny, whose toothy grin belies a lack of

actual teeth. Make sure she smiles for two teeth are better than too

many. Her hair should be in two pigtails like a Native American and

she must be selling something, preferably fruits, vegetables and

cigarettes. Under no circumstances should an adult man be shot beside

a child. That would imply that he is the father and everybody knows

that ghetto kids ain't got no daddy.

Come to think of it, forget, the ghetto; you must shoot in the

uberghetto. Remember that poor Jamaica is the real Jamaica. Forget

high-rise buildings, Taino tribal grounds, the second oldest railroad

track in the world, and the most fascinating network of underground

caves in the Caribbean. You need bad roads, shit running down the side

walks, zinc fences, tenements and gunmen, because this is the real

Jamaica. Please have the locals stack 12 speakers together, 3 in a row

and have the natives come out to wind their waists and slam dominoes

on the table or your viewers will think that it's Haiti. You must

shoot in district of Waterhouse. This will be in your contract for

Waterhouse is the music video ghetto of choice, probably because the

quick to be violent blackies aren't so violent there. But be sure to

buy the men in mesh merinos a hot Guinness or you might not make it

out of there alive. Remind yourself that if Alicia Keys can shoot

there, you can too.

Should you meet a gunman make sure to genuflect in the usual fashion.

But feel free to pass off an offensive comment so that the Jamaican

crew can never shoot in that place again. The nature of that comment

is up to you but forgo the racial for Jamaican Negroes are not black.

Make sure you have extra film left for the midnight dance so you can

remark how bestial and sexual the natives can be while dancing. Listen

as the Jamaican producer remarks that this is in keeping with our

African culture, even though he or she will not do such things until

after the wrap when they take you to Quad Nightclub where uptown

people grind each other. Try a dance yourself but restrict it to

hands, you don't need to remind us that white people cannot dance for

us to remember that we're still safe. Because once you take our dances

we'll have nothing left! Don't forget the smiling children.

Make sure there is at least one Rasta, Rastafarian to you. Please try

your hardest to find one that is old and almost toothless as the young

ones might make a play for your women folk. The Rastaman capacity for

seduction is legendary, just ask a certain vogue editor about her Bob

Marley lost weekend. One must have at least one Rasta to show the

world that yes; Bob Marley's spirit approves this video. Try to get

somebody to wear a Bob Marley T-Shirt while at it. While you cast for

Rastas makes sure that wardrobe drapes the video in red, green and

gold as these are the only colours that Jamaicans wear. Except the

dark blue uniforms of the school children. Extra points if the Rasta

is a coconut vendor for you can include a shot of him decapitating

said nut and drinking the juice to reassure your women that a big

black man with a machete is not a creature of violence but quaint

beauty.

All women must be fat. Your video babe will be imported so there is no

need to search for Jamaican women that American men find attractive.

Your women must have big, big, big breasts. Mount Everbreasts. She

must sport two wheelbarrows to carry each tit. And with big breasts

must come wide hips and monstrous thighs that could squash a penis

into a flounder. She must always have a basket of fruits on her head,

even though this is the ghetto. She must blush when called for, wind

her waist on cue and disappear as soon as a white woman enters the

shot.

When you have wrapped up the ghetto scenes, then it's time for the

other real Jamaica. The deep blue seas, the wide expansive sunrises

and the Rastas on the beach. Under no circumstances should you shoot a

building that is more than two stories high or was built in the 20th

century. In fact, make sure your structure or edifice is not taller

than 12 speakers placed together in rows of three. This is to remind

American viewers that Jamaicans party all the time and have no need

for houses or workplaces. Never ever let on that any Jamaican works

for a living in any other profession but selling fruit and cigarettes

on the street corner. Have you gotten the sun rising over the

mountains shot? The sun rising over the sea? The sun rising over the

ghetto? Good. Now shoot your sunsets. When that's done go to a market

and shoot some more market women selling fruit. And running children.

Make sure all of this is done before you shoot your star or he or she

may have to wait among poor people. This your star may find extremely

unpleasant because then he or she will have to take pictures with

babies who have never heard of her. And while no criminal lives in the

ghetto you might still want to spring for extra security because it's

not their fault that they may want to take stuff that is not theirs.

Private property? Bah!

Please also remember not to pay the extras. You will only create

monsters that will then expect to be paid for actually working on your

production. Believe the Jamaican producer when he tells you that the

locals will be so happy to be in your video that they won't even take

your money, after all, what use is money to poor people? Make sure you

thank the Jamaica Tourist Board for allowing you to film Jamaica in

the way they like Jamaica to be filmed. Granted, nobody at the tourist

board had ever seen or will ever see the ghetto (except in music

videos), but they trust that you had found lots of smiling black

children and a red green and gold color scheme to play with. And even

if you did not, throw in two or three sunsets and they will call it

even. And when you finally wrap up your shoot and fly back to where

you came from, please come back again soon. Without you, there's no

work for the country to do.