“Angeles of Fenway” is a new song from James Taylor’s new album Before The World. James was inspired to write the song when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, snapping an 86-year title drought. It took him over a decade to write this story about a grandmother who was a Red Sox fan, “even after grand dad died”, that wanted to share her love for the Sox with her young grandson.
The idea for the visuals was conceived by producer Marcia Kapustin of Kosher Pixels. The idea was to hide the major lyrics of the song in images of Fenway Park signage. As the video’s designer, I recognized that the song was broken into three different historical periods, the early years around 1918, the 1960’s era, and the year 20o4. In addition, I knew that James was not a big fan of new technology and preferred older mechanical stuff from “back in the day”
So for the first verse, I decided to make the imagery all black and white and have it look like you were watching frames through a classic View-Master. Transitions emulated the movements of the View-Master reels switching from picture to picture.
In the second verse we colorized the video to look like a 60’s print ad. And the third verse had a more modern look.
In the last verse of the song, the grandmother is coming to the end of her years. The lyrics read;
Nanna watched from her hospital bed
She was there ’til the end of the race
I couldn’t hear the last words she said
But she was lying there with a smile on her face
Sadly, during the middle of production of this content, I myself suffered a major life threatening heart attack which landed me at the UCLA Medical Center Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I thought “What better place to shoot something for the last verse”. So with an IV in my arm and tubes and wires going everywhere, I used my iPhone to shoot a photo of my own hospital bed. Yes those are my feet. I photoshopped a Red Sox balloon into the scene and a still of the 2004 World Series game was composited into the TV screen to finish the video… “with a smile on my face”
I am pleased to say that I had a full recovery and soon after my release from the hospital, I took my own two sons to their first professional baseball game. Go Dodgers!