Pre-Production: Treatment

Treatment



Artist & Audience


The Artist is named ‘Solo’. He is a young RnB/Soul artist who aims to convey passion and emotion into his music. This is definitely a challenge to the stereotype that all young males are insensitive. He has a target audience of males and females aged 15-25 years old, simply because his music is based on emotion, therefore targeting many females, whilst also aiming at the teenage/young adult age group because they are primarily the ones at the stage where they look for love in their lives, in terms of ideology. Solo’s music also seems to acquire the taste of some middle-classed audiences, with his powerful sense of style which seems somewhat simple yet sophisticated. This sophistication is represented through his clothes which we will definitely be portraying when playing solo in the music video through mise-en-scene.


The target audience are still primarily working-class young adults, mainly based in the UK. This video will be targeting the audience who are slightly more into their relationships and fashion. We will aim to appeal to them by using A LOT of mise-en-scene such as clothing, lighting, a slight sense of performance and setting. Clothing will primarily be with a level of sophistication, no tracksuits etc , which are stereotyped for the less sophisticated young audiences, and aim to film in settings which are tourist attractions e.g. London eye and the Millennium Bridge.


Along with this, the aspect of a conceptual channel in our music video should appeal to the young audience through their other media consumption using conceptual imagery through green-screen editing and a projector as we have discovered through our research that music videos of a similar genre have done this successfully and it has strongly appealed to our audiences, such as Drake – Over.


Our Vision

• Mise-en-scene in both the music video and the ancillary products will have the artist in a number of sophisticated outfits and dark lighting with Gels to create a dark-coloured effect of lighting during the video. Along with this we want to create/film in a setting which conveys another sense of sophistication which will represent our artist well in that way. This will give mise-en-scene a powerful role in our music video to represent the brand. In this mise-en-scene we will be conveying our house colours to be dark colours such as Grey, Purple and black to create a sense of mystery in his character and branding. These colours will be included in ALL our products to emphasise the sense of synergy throughout.


• The editing style/cinematography is going to be a HUGE part of our music video as we are going to attempt to create a number of shots in a kind of pencil/paint effect whilst the artist is performing in the channel where he’s sitting on the bed, along with this we want to make parts of the video in a picture-in-picture style, to appeal to the young target audience who enjoy the visual effects in a music video. In these P.I.P shots we can put of the music video channels we are going to use, one of the female alone and another with the male alone, which won’t be a performance style. We are also considering using these effects for the ancillary products with the house colours to again convey the synergy between the products. The cinematography will be an unexpected and uncommon aspect of our filming as we are choosing to do a number of long shots which are quite lengthy between cuts depending on how it will flow with the song. We will try to use a projector to play conceptual images over the artist during the performance channel of the video, where he is again sitting on the bed singing.


• The Magazine Advert and DVD Digipak will be strongly synergised through the house colours, the main images, the mise-en-scene and the artist itself. This will be synergised with the music video also with house colours but also with still shots from the music video at the back of the DVD Digipak as a preview to appeal the audiences, and maybe some images during the video as the main images to synergise through the actions of the artist.


• We are going to have a number of genre conventions such as a ‘cut to the beat’ style video which will flow with the song to create a sense of flow instead of going with the idea of making it not flow and making the audience feel confused. Another genre convention which we will be using for the RnB/Soul music video is to include a channel in the music video which primarily focuses on the narrative of the song, and the break-up which we can also tell from the song title ‘Solo ‘ver Now’.






Technology Use


We will be using a wide variety of technology for this project including the music video and both ancillary products. For the music video we will be using the camera equipment provided by the school, along with its green screen filming area. This is all during the actual filming stage, once editing begins we will be using a Final Cut Pro. This is an advanced editing software that will allow us to use picture-in-picture, slow motions, visual effects etc. This is useful as we are aiming to create a music video that uses new technology heavily in order to create the style which we know will appeal to our target audience.


For the Magazine Advert and DVD Digipak production we will be using Photoshop CS5 as I am very familiar with the software. It is also because it allows us to create a product which is as close to perfect as possible, with tools such as the magnetic lasso etc. We will definitely exploit this technology until we are more than satisfied with our products as it is a perfect tool to create the Digipak and Advert.


Logistics


We will be filming in a number of locations such as central London, possibly on the Millennium Bridge, London Eye and on some popular roads such as embankment. To film in some of these tourist attractions we will need permission by the local authority therefore we will go ahead and get the permission by the time production begins. The whole aim of that is to create a level of sophistication in the music video which represents the artist’s style. We will be filming primarily in the evenings and afternoons when it gets darker in terms of natural lighting. This will help set the mood of the video as mise-en-scene is very important. Other locations we will be filming in is my house, in the bedroom as we need a bed to film the performance channel where he is singing on the bed with ambient lighting of the house colours.


The artist in the video will be me (Shani) as we cannot get the actual artist to come perform in the music video after several attempts of asking him. We will be having a female in the music video which will represent the lost love in the narrative of the lyrics.


In order for our production to be successful and also help us on the ancillary products we will be planning with a production schedule of what days we can film the which shots etc. Along with this we will be taking recce images during production to give us an idea of the artist style which will be used in his clothing during the creation of the ancillary products and primarily the main image of the artist.