At the beginning of every video project, there is a need to work with the artist to define a desired treatment.
A video treatment, also known as video concept, outlines information with regards to what the music video will be about. Conceptually, a music video could show the artist performing the song in front of a live audience or by itself; alternatively, a music video can also present a story line where certain situations and storytelling takes place. Furthermore, it can also be an experimental exercises where random images are shown to complement the music in a more abstract way. All of these angles constitute the treatment, or concept, of a music video.
However, a video treatment goes beyond this exercise of defining the overall direction of the video. The treatment goes down to describe the kind of locations, situations, stories, images, look and feel, tone and colour, pacing and so on of the music video. Even though most treatment writers don't follow specific guidelines or structures, a well written treatment is one that can successfully communicate complete ideas to artists.
Below is all the ideas that are thought about when deciding the concept:
1) What is the video about? Does it have a storyline?
2) Does it show the artist singing live?
3) What are the locations used?
4) How is the artist represented?
5) Are there random images?
6) What is the aesthetic?
7) Colours?
8) Costume?
9) Imagery, symbolism?
10) Intertextual references?
11) Inspiration?
12) What characters are involved (extras etc?)
Below is a short YouTube video of Selena Gomez talking about the concept of her new single 'Naturally':
Music Videos- Concept
Task: You are going to watch four music videos, try and think about; what is the concept? Does the video relate to the music video? Do you like it? Why? What would you change if you were the director?
1) Daft Punk- ‘Da Punk’ directed by Spike Jonze.
What is the concept? Dark, fantastical view from a metaphorical dog.
Does it relate to the lyrics? It doesn’t relate to the lyrics as there are no lyrics.
Do I like it? Why? I like the story behind it, but don’t see any relation. It feels like a song just playing in a movie, so I would rather have the song turned down so I could hear the characters talking- like a movie
What would I change? As it is a music video, not a movie I would want the video speech turned off so the video is the same and just the music playing.
2) LCD Sound system- ‘Drunk girls’ directed by Spike Jonze.
What is the concept? ‘Girls’ dressed up saying collectively drunk people are annoying and ‘silly’.
Bands are used to performing live so are used to distractions- so they just carried on.
Does it relate to the lyrics? I feel it does relate to the lyrics ‘Drunk girls’ annoying, turning into wild animals trying to put of the band.
Do I like it? Why? I like the video, as it is hectic and like a party- its not a typical music video, with animals.
What would I change? I would change the way it was shot, as there could many more level changes, and camera shots.
3) Bjork- ‘It’s oh so quite’ Directed by Spike Jonze.
What is the concept? There is quite a childish theme to the video.
Does it relate to the lyrics? It relates the lyrics when it says ‘sshh’ the artist puts her finger on her lip and says it quietly.
Do I like it? Why? I like the fact that there is a theatrical theme to the video and choreographed dancing.
What would I change? There is nothing I would change about this video.
4) Kayne west- ‘Runaway’ Directed by himself.
What is the concept? I didn’t feel like there was a clear concept. But clear intertextuality is used, between Ballet and Hip Hop, and a contrast of black and white.
Does it relate to the lyrics? I didn’t feel that what was going on was relating to the video.
Do I like it? Why? I like the fact that it’s not a typical convention of a hip hop genre. i also liked the uses of colours of Reds, Blacks and to contrast the Whites. The story that links all the songs together ties in well and are really enjoyable.
What would I change? I would have different shots, the ballet dancers in a different scene, and single shots of Kayne West, then a mixture with them both together. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1650698/kanye-west-explains-michael-jackson-runaway-scene.jhtml - on this website Kayne West explains the concept behind the 'Michael Jackson' scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_z9orSyMug - on this Website Kayne West Explains the concept of the whole feature film.
Target Audience Demographic
We researched and found that as Adele is a mainstream pop artist and has sold millions of albums and has been number one in the charts for weeks it is impossible to tell what her demographic audience is. However we have researched her official website and noticed that it was mainly women who had commented on her networking site.
The artist we have chosen to study is Adele. Who is a singer- songwriter, who works with soul, country soul, blues and pop genres, and who has been active since 2006.
In this demographic I will be looking at, age, gender, interests, social grading, and ethnicity and urban/rural.
When looking into research for Adele’s audience, we took into account, Adele’s twitter followers, Facebook followers, my own Facebook friends, Yahoo, people with different statuses, and ethnicities.
When posting ‘Who likes Adele?’ onto my personal Facebook, I picked a random 42 people 21 Male and 21 Female, with different tastes and ethnicities. Out of the 42 people asked 20 Females said they do like Adele while only one person said no. out of the 21 Males, 9 said yes they do like her and 12 said no. This clearly shows Females prefer Adele to males.
Also from our own Facebook poll we could gather ages, below is the age range that we got it went from 14-72
15 under= 3
16-20= 25 (own age group)
21-25= 4
26=30= 2
31=-35= 2
36-40= 2
40+= 4
More information we received whilst doing our own poll was different ethnicities which are listed below:
English=
- Yes= 24
- No= 5
Asian=
- Yes= 2
- No- 4
Irish=
- Yes= 4
- No= 0
Other=
- Yes= 2
- No= 1
From this, we can see in each category the people who were asked more people said they did like her than not, apart from the 6 Asian people asked more said they didn’t like her than did like her.
A similar survey was carried out on ‘Yahoo’ (but from this survey gender could not be distinguished) 41 people answered the same question ‘Do you like Adele?’ out of those 41 people 26 people said they do like Adele and 15 people said they didn’t, so again it is clear females like Adele over Males. (Ages from twitter range from 14- 40)
From Adele’s official Twitter there are 915,375 followers, we picked the first 100, from that we received that 85 of those followers were Female and 15 Male. (Ages from Facebook couldn’t be retrieved)
On Facebook Adele has 5,619,572 followers (however on Facebook you cannot see all the fans, only ones that are your friends to- so the statistics are from 13 people.) 12 Females like her and one Male doesn’t like her.
Music video questionnaire
Please Circle your answer
What gender are you?
Male Female
What age group are you?
Under 15 16-18 19-21 22-25 Over 25
What do you expect to see in an Adele video? (Circle as many as you wish)
Heartbreak Dance routine lip syncing Other (please state) ………………………..
What do you want see to in Adele videos? (Circle as many as you wish)
Live performance Narrative Good use of mise en scene Good costume & setting
Other (Please state)……………………….
What colours do you expect to see in a Adele video?
Black & white Sepia Warm colours Calm colours Other(Please State)………………...
Do you prefer a music video to be funny or serious?
Funny Serious
What aspects of a video make it more interesting for you?
Mise en scene Watching the artist
Adele plays such a huge role as an Artist as her fan base is very large and is mostly females however there are males who also enjoy her music. She appeals to people of all ages therefore the test wasnt really that fair because most people we asked were aged 16-18.
When we carried out our questionnaire we asked 8 female and 2 males, this was because when we carried out our secondary research on Adele, we found out that most of her fans were female therefore they'd have the most input.
most of the people we asked were aged 16 to 18, this shows that most of Aeles fans are teenagers.
From our results we noticed that 50% of people expected to see heartbreak in her video as this is likely to be the norm. Therefore we have decided to stick to her norm.
Most people wanted the location to be in the artists home as they feel they can relate to her more.
Most people wanted to see a serious Adele video as if it was made funny it wouldnt really portray the artist or her lyrics very well.
We made the questionnaire fair in relation to her fans however, if we had of asked more men we may have got different artists. Also she appeals to a lot more than 16 to 18 year olds and has a huge fan base.
Primary research proposal
We have decided to carry out a questionnaire and a focus group as our primary research in order to find out the target audience for our music video and also to help us produce the a music video to the best of our ability. We will hand the questionnaires out to a numerous amount of random people therefore we get an idea of what sort of people like our chosen artist (Adele) and those who don’t like her music. Once we have found out what are target audience is, we will then create a focus group of Adele fans with the correct target audience.
We believe these are the best options available to us. We will hand the questionnaires out to random people so we can get an idea of what sort of ages and sex like Adele, If we was to hand them out to just teenagers we wouldn’t get the full idea of whom likes Adele and who doesn’t. The questionnaire will help us find our target audience, once we have figured this out we will take a select few from her target audience and carry out a focus group with them. We think a focus group is a good idea as we can get more information off of the Adele fans and get deeper into what they think would make a good Adele video.
We hope to gain enough data and enough information from the Adele fans to see what we have to aim towards and what they like. It is no good getting information from the public if we are not going to follow what they like, if we follow what they like and what they expect to see in an Adele video and what they believe will make a good video then the video is more likely to be a hit than if we guess.
We will collect the data from the questionnaires and present the results in graphs, this is so out of so many people we asked we are able to see how many liked it and if it was a success then we know we must stick to that as that is what most people thought was the best option.
The data has a huge role to play in what we choose to do with our video as we must listen to what the fans want to see so we can work towards that in order for our music video to become a success.
