Individual Brief Ideas For A Pop Promo For A Song

Before we got into groups and picked a song to make a music video for, we individually chose a song and thought about a pop promo to make for it and the synopsis and treatment for it. Below is my individual idea for a pop promo for a song. The song I have chosen is "Before The Worst" by "The Script". I chose this as the song itself it relatively unknown so people won't have any preconceived ideas of what music video to expect from the song, and it doesn't already have its own music video.


Click here to listen to the song.

Click here for the song's lyrics.

Synopsis

The music video is going to have a fairly strong relationship with the lyrics of the song. It won't simply illustrate the lyrics alone, but key lines will play a part in the visual associated.

The video starts with a young man sitting on some steps in a busy town center or city area, with people rushing past going about their day to day lives. He sits and looks towards the camera and sings the lyrics to the opening of the song. After a few seconds, it cuts to a shot of him a few months ago, meeting a girl in the same area where he is sitting now (but in black and white to show its the past). Then throughout the rest of the video it goes over the same pattern, cutting from happy, scenes with him and his girlfriend in the past, such as in a bar, at the beach and playing in a snowy park, back to him sitting on the steps. It then cuts back to the past, showing them having an argument (that ends with them splitting up and showing him deleting her number from his phone) to now where he is single and depressed and sitting on the steps with people going past, wishing he could go back to those moments with her. He is remembering all the good times "before the worst", with "the worst" being when they split up.

Treatment

The present times with the man singing the lyrics will be in colour (although desaturated to give it a glum and depressed feel), but the flashbacks to the past with his ex girlfriend will be in black and white to symbolise to the audience that the time they were a couple is now over, and that he misses those times. The man will be dressed quite scruffily, which conveys the idea that he doesn't really care about much now that he is on his own with no-one else. The shot of him sitting on the steps will be high angled, to make him look vulnerable now that he is on his own. An extreme close up shot will be used of his mobile phone, showing him deleting her number from his phonebook, to convey to the audience the message that they have split up. There will be no added sound effects in the video, just the music track. Some shots of the past with the couple together will be slowed down, to show that the memory's are now rather distant and hazy, and also this will fit in with the tempo of the song well, rather than having fast action.