Treatment

The song “Without You” is essentially about a guy who gets broken up with and misses the girl who doesn’t deserve him but the song itself is a lot deeper. So with the narrative of my story I want to show the males perspective which is having confused feelings. So to show his perspective I want to create a mysterious narrative that will leave the viewer confused just like the man. The song itself is fairly relatable to most viewers so I want to make sure the male protagonist is well received and relatable. The narrative will be based on the guy being with and without the girl to match the lyrics which conforms to Goodwin’s conventions.

My survey showed that people mainly wanted to narrative but still some people chose performance and I want my music video to reflect this so I want my music video to be narrative based whilst seeing bits of the band perform. To make the band more relatable and to show they are down to earth, I want the lead singer to appear a lot as I believe his songs are very meaningful about his past experiences maybe and to show that hes down to earth by filming him in urban average locations which is also confroms to the indie conventions of low budget urban settings. Having lots of close ups of the lead singer also conforms to Goodwin's star theory. This proportion of narrative to performance is typical of the indie genre as indie tends to value narrative.

I want to start the video with something unique which should give my video an already mysterious edge and this should conform to the indie genre as indie is often unique and quirky. The video will start in a public place such as a bar or a café and there will be shot of the male sat down and some ambient café sounds and then it will cut to a shot of the female walking away where you hear the song start to play but then it cuts back to the guy and ambient sound, and back and forth. The female will be shown twice with the music starting before going back to the guy and the ambient sound where it cuts to an establishing shot and the song actually starts. This hopefully will add an element of confusing as well as showing the significance of the female because she is just as important to the song as she is to the male protagonist.

The song has a chorus separated by a verse so during the calmer verses I wanted to show how he’s feeling after she’s hurt him, so looking quite depressed and visiting all the places they used to go etc and then in the chorus which is a lot more upbeat you see the male protagonist happy with the girl and I want to create a confusing image in the viewers head of “is he back with the girl or not?”. I want to show the guy with and without the girl in lots of low budget settings mainly because it’s an indie characteristic to be in low budget destinations and because I don’t really have a budget so. Some of possibly locations would be on a bus, in the streets, in a car park and other places like that.

The majority of shots will be hand held as this is a convention of the indie genre however I will be using a drone to get establishing and long shots which can show the isolation of the male protagonist. The final scene I want to be really misleading. There will be a shot of the female hugging the male as the song ends but then it cuts to a long shot from the drone of the guy buy himself looking around which will leave the audience wondering if they did get back together or not and it was just in his head.

As mentioned earlier the song "Without you" is based of a break up how the male protagonist feels incomplete without his female counterpart, so I would like to base the narrative off a metaphor by having jigsaw pieces that represnt him being in complete and in order to get the girl back, the male protagonist follows the jigsaw pieces in hopes of getting her back and when he finally find all the pieces that spell a message hidden for most of the song, the female protagonist then appears and the equilibrium will have been restored. The message reads "Wake up" which links to the song lyrics as one of the lines is "wake up" and when the male protagonist reads the message he wakes up and his female counter part is there but it is all still an illusion as he still hasn't woken up, he wakes up later when the song ends and he realises he alone. I will enhance how alone and isolated the male protagonist is at the end because it will be revealed at the very end of the song and he will look around in silence. So according to Barthes the narrative would be complete now the equilibrium has been restored as it is broken right at the start by the female leaving the male. However it should then cut to female disappearing showing that it was just an illusion and he is still alone and that the equilibrium has not been fixed.