Winter is here!
With the new season (season 7) of Game of Thrones (GoT) currently on air (having kickstarted on July 16 on HBO), the madness among GoT fans has intensified further. Pune and Goa-based singer and songwriter, Clyonton Fernandes, has a real treat for the fans in the form of a music video titled Playing The Game of Thrones. The video has been received well within its short span of release. It has already got more than 100K views and 230 shares on Facebook and 8,000 views on Instagram. The popularity of the video has prompted Fernandes to put up a gig in Pune tonight. He will be performing to the song at Lost the Plot.
Fernandes, who spearheads the band Eden Official and is also a freelance musician playing covers of bands like Queen, Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin and the likes, has collaborated with city-based writer-director-producer at Roadside Entertainment Swapnil Kumawat to create the video with lyrics that resonates with GoT fans and visuals which are equally fascinating.
To make the video even more realistic, Fernandes, alongside pianist Varun Irani, can be seen in GoT-inspired costumes and hairdos. The light and the stage too will transport you to the mystical land of GoT.
“It all started three months ago when I happened to have a gig in Pune and was heavily under prepared. I had to come up with a song to have a proper set. While riding to work a tune kept playing in my head and I kept linking it to Playing The Game of Thrones. I spent three hours writing the lyrics which eventually became the song available on YouTube,” he says.
Given the popularity of GoT, Fernandes had to be careful about the lyrics so that the song did not turn out cheesy. He says, “GoT has become a cult TV show, so to impress people about something they know so much about is the first challenge. If I wasn’t impressed with the words, I just discarded them and wrote new stuff. There were parts that made me laugh and parts that made me cry. As soon as that happened, I had a song.”
While Fernandes belts out the song, Irani plays the piano and Bimal Subba plays the violin, and the programming has been done by Jhonston D’Souza, who, along with the others, has contributed to the amazing composition.
“It’s amazing how a series of impossible events have been stitched together by very strong human emotions. You know it’s not true, but you so want to believe it. The audience will relate to the catch phrases (example ‘winter is here’) in a humorous way as they are familiar with them,” quips Fernandes who represented India at the Karaoke World Championships held in Singapore in 2015 and was the first Kingfisher Voice of Goa.
Talking about the video, Kumawat, who visualised and directed the song, says, “We didn’t have more than one-and-a-half weeks with us, and not a budget for a big production too. But still the team decided to put the best of their effort and make a good product. We released the video before season 7 took off. The response for the song has been overwhelming and we are happy to see that even those who do not follow the show are also loving the video.”
The brilliant use of animation and motion graphics is what makes it different from other fan-made videos. Kumawat says, “Sahil Sande, a huge GoT fan and illustrator, came on board and we finalised the style of illustrations. Soon Pune-based animation studio Illusion Ethereal joined hands for the motion graphics and animation.”
ST READER SERVICE
Clyonton Fernandes will perform at Lost The Plot, Seasons — An Apartment Hotel, Aundh, on 17th July at 9 pm
