Individual Treatment: The Message

Song: For The Girl/Country Boys and City Girls - The Fratelli's

Narrative: Girl writes a note, hands it to the person next to her, who passes the note on to the person next to them. The note is then handed from person to person, growing further and further from its origin and being passed on under more difficult and unusual circumstances.

Eventually the note finds its way to a school, is passed down a corridor and into a classroom to a boy. He reads the note and looks to his left and smiles at the girl who wrote the note.

The twist would be the revelation that this note was not being delivered far, as the boy and girl we're sitting next to each other from the beginning.

Alternatively, the girl could whisper the message. The male and female roles could also be swapped.

Action:

• Girl writing note
• Hands passing the note between them
• Running down school corridors, roads, parks, forests
• Note being given to a runner on a track in a relay, and is passed between runners. The final runner would finish the race and run straight off the track, continuing to the next person.
• A bride running down the middle of a road with the note, kicking off her shoes so she can run faster. Perhaps with bridesmaids/people carrying the train of her dress.
• Someone running through a picnic scene, leaping over mats/food or running straight through.
• The note handed to a postman (at a postbox) by a runner by. The postman would then stand still holding the note looking confused, until another person runs up and takes the note from him.
• The carrier running through a shop, knocking things over. Equally a busy street or shopping centre with the carrier running into people and generally causing chaos.
• The person carrying the note runs into a house, into the living room (to the shock of the residents) and out the backdoor.
• A person running through a forest, ducking under trees, jumping streams.
• The 'band' could take part in the video as carriers of the note, and also bring the performance aspect - maybe a scene of a gig which they leave to carry the note.
• At the quieter part of the song (near its climax), whoever is carrying the note gets tired and stops momentarily to catch their breath, perhaps sitting down or leaning on a wall. They look over their shoulder to see a large group of people running towards him and he begins to run again.
• At the video's climax, the large group of people all determined to deliver the note squeeze down a school corridor (english corridor?) until they reach the classroom, with only one person running into the room and handing the note to the boy.
• Shot of the note and a track down, revealing the note to say "I don't like you, you can't stand me, I can't love you any more than this.", the final words of the song.
• The video finishes with the boy looking at the girl (maybe over his shoulder) and smiling as she smiles back.

Location: Latymer (english corridor, hallways), residential streets/areas (Broadwalk, areas around school/around my house), Grovelands's park (forest, lake, grass), Enfield Town, Lakeside, central London.

Actors: The runners could be played by anyone, with more notable roles requiring fitting actors. The band's clothing would be distinctive, identifying them as different from any of the random 'members of the public' carrying the note. The boy and girl could be in school uniform or their own clothes, as would the rest of the 'class'.

Detailed Synopsis: Idea 2 - Buildings

Themes: acting, stage, masque, plays, urban life

Narrative: The MV starts with a shot of the sun rising behind Big Ben and other expected London buildings. The camera would track back to reveal people walking along and cars driving past. It would become evident quickly that the buildings and set are actually people wearing cardboard cut-outs of the famous buildings to create the location.

Scenes from various famous cities would unfold as the singer/band stays within shot, interacting with their location or performing, with the scenery and buildings moving around them.

Locations: real - a park/field, empty room, stage, hall. fake - London, Paris, Rome, Sydney

Songs: The artist themselve(s) would be pivotal to this idea, so a good performance song with easily heard lyrics and strong rhythm would be best.

• Bohemian Like You
• Processed Beats
• One Week
• Country Boys and City Girls

Detailed Synopsis: Idea 1 - The Message

Themes: movement, urgency, travel, delivery

Narrative: The MV starts in a classroom and an establishing shot of a boy writing. The boy finishes writing, folds his paper up and hands it to the person sitting to his right. This person then takes the paper and gives it to someone standing outside the room, who then runs off down the hallway.

As the music video progresses, the paper would be handed from person to person in more distant and unusual places, by increasingly different and unusual methods. The paper would eventually find itself in front of a girl at the video's climax, who would then open it and read it. She would then look to her right and smile at the boy who initially wrote the note, who would smile back.

The fact that the girl is sitting next to him would not be initially obvious, but eventually revealed at the video's climax.

The male/female roles in the narrative could easily be reversed: with the girl sending the note and the boy receiving it.

Also, cross cuts between the band performing, or even taking part in delivering the note, could be placed inbetween the numerous people running to deliver the note to it's next carrier.

Locations: classroom, hallway, park, buildings, houses, gardens, streets

Songs: This idea is best suited to faster, uptempo music which sounds lively and positive.

• Bohemian Like You
• Processed Beats
• Place Your Hands
• One Week
• Country Boys and City Girls
• For The Girl

Masque: Magnolia and Skins

This is a scene from Paul Thomas Andersons' film 'Magnolia' where all the main characters uncharacteristically burst into song. This sequence is useful as it shows an entirely character and narrative driven performance of a song, in the form of a masque.

The masque is a narrative device which allows resolution or progression of a narrative through unconventional and self-referential means, such as singing, costumes/disguise and acting. It has more recently been used in the season finale of the hit drama, Skins (see below), which similiarly features a character severely injured (and in no state to be singing) which mirrors the dead character in Magnolia.

The characters in the sequence are actually singing the song, with emphasis on the lyrics which illustrate the emotions felt by the characters at this pivotal point in the film.

This use of music as a means of unifying these characters is unusual, especially in a film which remains realistic and grounded up until this point.

Although this is an extract from a film, which has an established and progressive narrative building up to this point, it stands alone as an extract which displays the emotional state of the characters effectively, whether the viewer has seen the rest of the film or not.

It is this ability to create a sense of narrative and portray emotion in a 3 minutes+ extract that I would like to incorporate into our own music video.

Below is the final moments of the series finale of Skins. (spoilers)

Initial Ideas

Performance
- live/in a club/in a hall
- band/singer lipsynching

Editing
- fast cuts
- cuts opposing the beat
- cuts to the beat

Costume
- genre of music (ie. indie, punk)
- pieces of set (buildings, tree's)

Setting/Location
- country/city
- outside/inside
- weather

Narrative
- (Who's Gonna Sing?)
- conflict between two people
- opposite sides of a room
- back and forth between characters
- girl and boy outperforming each other

- (Creepin' up the Backstairs)
- movement
- walking/running/staircases
- mixture of performance and narrative
- alternate between band and characters speaking lyrics
- boy pursuing girl

Top 5 Song Choices

1) Who's Gonna Sing? - Prototypes
2) Processed Beats - Kasabian
3) One Week - Barenaked Ladies
4) Automatic - Dead Disco
5) Place Your Hands - Reef