Treatment sheet - This Lonely Morning

1. BEST COAST
“THIS LONELY MORNING”
TREATMENT SHEET
SIAN HOLLAND

2. CONCEPT
The themes in this video will amplify the lyrics of ‘This Lonely Morning’. The girl
sings about feeling alone whilst in some form of romantic relationship – I’m
going to show this through the weather and through the amount of people I’ll
have in the video at different times. ‘This Lonely Morning’ will be shot on a
beach, which I think fits in with the music style and acts as a link to the artist
name – Best Coast. The weather will act as a metaphor for how she feels in her
relationship – I aim to shoot when the weather is nice and calm to represent
happiness and stability which will feature both the artist and an actor being her
significant other, and shoot other parts when the weather is dull and/or hostile
to represent the anger and emptiness felt when she’s alone. This is partially
inspired by Coldplay’s Yellow music video which is also set on a beach featuring
their lead singer walking along a beach as he sings about someone he loves as
the day progresses and the sky gets brighter. The video will be fast-paced to fit
the sound of the song: the artist will be dancing around and lip syncing into the
camera in many different shots in different styles to add to the ‘star image’ (ref:
Andrew Goodwin’s theory) and creative editing techniques will be used to make
it more interesting yet still look natural and simple. I feel that this will match the
artist genre as many artists of the indie pop genre use interesting concepts yet
can still keep the videos quite simple.

3. NARRATIVE
‘This Lonely Morning’ is about being in a relationship where you feel almost
trapped within the other person even though they don’t seem to care too much.
You can’t get free no matter what you do, and you may not even be trying. It
doesn’t sound like a very secure and healthy relationship but it has some sort of
hold on the singer as she is very aware that she feels alone and that she’s hurting
herself by continuing the relationship but on some level, she doesn’t care: “ I can't
escape the world sometimes”.
The two different weather scenes will seemingly balance each other out as the
audience views the difference in the mood of the artist. She will be much happier
when she’s with someone – this will hopefully be reflected in the weather as it’s
brighter when he’s around. Alternatively, the different weather scene will also
reflect her mood as she is alone as it will be darker and she will seem more
melancholy than before. This is a crucial part of the narrative because the
representation of the mood through weather will give it a deeper meaning than if
the entire video was shot in one weather mood.

4. The video will feature activities such as going to the arcades and walking along
the beach. While these are simple ideas, the editing techniques and actual shots
will make it interesting although the main themes and true meaning of the video
is shown through the weather conditions. Throughout the video, people will see
the artist with the other half of her unsure relationship and then alone. The end
of the video will show her alone yet happy – this gives the audience the
opportunity to decide if she is coming to terms with what’s happening or if she
finally decided to break it off. An ambiguous ending allows the video to get more
meaning into it as people can deliberate the ending.
LOCATION
The main vision I had for this music video was to set it on a beach. I felt this
would be associated with the song and the artist name. Also, past videos released
by the same musician usually feature the beach or an aspect of beach life, for
example palm trees and a bright sun. For this music video, it’s important that I
stick to using the same location because I want to use shots that mirror each
other. Seaton Carew is a likely choice because it’s easily accessible and would be
perfect to get my concept across to the audience. However, when trying to get
the weather right it could be difficult, but I do have the choice to use some
editing techniques to make it appear more how I imagined it.

5. PERFORMANCE
Inspiration for a performance element came from previous videos released by
the artist. Best Coast generally has performance in their music videos. I will aim
to continue this to stick to the audience expectation of this band. I will use
guitars only as it would be difficult to get and set up a drum kit on a beach.
However, I don’t think this will affect the quality of the video. It will fit in with
the audience expectation of a Best Coast music video as people will presume
there’s going to be a performance element to the video. I also want to show her
dancing around a little as this will put some fun into the video and give another
performance element to the whole concept.
I will use a split-screen for part of the video, with one half showing her lip-syncing
and the other showing something else happening. I got this idea from the
lyric video for ‘This Lonely Morning’ which shows some lyrics on one side and
the musicians on the other at times, but also from the music video ‘Sugar Water’
by Cibo Matto, directed by Michel Gondry. This video entirely is split-screen:
each side shows the same footage, one going forward while the other goes
backward, which meets in the middle of the video and then seems to almost be
reversed as the duo swap screens and the way their story is shown (reverse or
straightforward). I find this very effective because you’re seeing both sides of a
story as it plays out in different time. Whilst I won’t be using this technique in
such a complex way as this, I aim to use it still.

6. CAMERA AND EDITING
The shot count task gave me a general number to try to stick to when shooting
my video. They were relatively fast shots which fits my chosen song. The video I
chose for the task (Trampoline – We The Wild, dir. Mike Lee Thomas) generally
used medium and long shots with the occasional close up. I will remember this
when constructing my own video but will more than likely try to have a wider
variety of shots within my video. This will allow me to convey different emotions
through the actors in it and get the point of the narrative across. I will use close
ups to get the ‘star image’ (see Andrew Goodwin) across and for the lip syncing
parts. I want to use different types of focusing such as shallow and deep, and I
also want to use jump cuts within the video. I think it will make the video more
interesting and could also be fun to use when she is dancing. I also want to try to
use thought beats in this music video. It could be hard to do as there aren’t many
distinctive parts of it to use but I think it could be interesting to try. As a further
technique, I would like to try and use double exposure to show the sea inside of
her. This gives another meaning to the concept and would look nice.
MISE-EN-SCENE
The colours produced are generally going to be the colour of the beach: blues,
greys, etc. Those will have connotative meanings when paired with the concept.
The costume won’t be anything un-simple; the two actors will wear regular
casual clothes (dress/skirt/trousers for the girl, t-shirt/jeans for the boy) to
portray the normality of the people although they’re in an abnormal situation in
relation to how they feel when they’re together.
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