Kenny Chesney‘s video for his new single “All The Pretty Girls” makes its World Premiered on CMT’s Hot 20 Countdown this Saturday, August 12. The video is not your typical country music video by a major star–this one was made by college students! Jessica Martinez and her co-director Will Renner entered a contest to have their own filmed video for Kenny’s “All The Pretty Girls” be the official music video–and they won! It took a week’s planning and two days of shooting, but Jessica and Will created a video that reflected the random nature of meeting that special someone during college break. The pair of Belmont University students created a clip that was marked both by innocence and what felt like authenticity of that kind of summer love for the winning entry. Kenny Chesney commented that “It’s cool seeing this creativity from college kids. They understood how to build a storyline and narrative, and they bring a fresh eye to these moments. (Their clip)’s really sweet, and just what this kind of song needed. I’m as thrilled to be part of Jessica’s college education as I am to have her – and Will’s – creativity be a part of this song.” Of course Jessica and Will learned that making music videos are not that easy…Jessica admitted that “We thought the first day was only going to be five hours, but when we got started, we found some more creative things to do. We ended up shooting for ten hours, with an hour for lunch.” The video story line features a group of girls – actual friends – having a day, but running into some boys and needing some money, the viewer watches the relationship between the lead girl and one of the boys evolve through house parties, bonfires, car rides, hiking and creek jumping. Jessica shares that “Our vision was to capture the essence of a summer fling; just the feeling of freedom and having fun, not taking things too seriously, because Will is from Virginia, he was able to get people he knows from high school (to be part of it), which made it really fun to shoot.” When Jessica, a film major at Belmont, heard of the contest to make the “All The Pretty Girls” video for Kenny Chesney she texted Will, who’s a music business major, with questions about editing software – and they decided to team up. Both have experience as PAs and low-tier jobs on student films, but Jessica says “this was the first big project for both of us that was totally ours. It was such an incredible experience to do everything all the way from idea conception to editing.” Kenny, who’s been known to make a music or video or two over the years, was completely impressed by Jessica and Will’s final project. Kenny says “To create something at this level when you’re in college is a huge thing. In ‘the real world,’ this is the kind of accomplishment people look at. But I think what’s so great about their ‘All The Pretty Girls’ video is you can also see how they translate their hearts into the work. People will see this, and know what Jessica and Will are capable of.” Jessica still can’t believe her and Will’s video was picked, “We didn’t daydream about winning, but now that we’ve been told we won, it’s honestly surreal. We just wanted to create something awesome.”
To see all of Jessica and Will’s hard work, the World Premiered of the video for Kenny Chesney’s “All The Pretty Girls” is this Saturday, August 12th, on CMT’s Hot 20 Countdown.
Kenny Chesney talks about his song, “All The Pretty Girls” and he also shares a story of the first pretty girl that he wrote a song for. (:43)
“‘All The Pretty Girls’ has so much life wrapped into three and a half minutes. I think if you ask anyone that’s a musician, or that writes songs for a living, or plays guitar in any way, the majority of my friends that play guitar or in this business did it so a girl would pay attention to them…and that’s my case. I wrote my first song about a girl that was in my persuasion class, ironically enough. I was trying to persuade her into going out with me. Now she sat right beside me and I gave her the tape of the song I wrote about her and the next day I went in, I was scared right, and she was sitting all the way in the corner on the other side of the room, which that was my first taste of rejection in life OK, when it came to my music. (laugh)”