TREATMENT FOR THE MUSIC VIDEO

My advert is aimed at girls aged 16-25 and will run for a duration of 3 minutes and 18 seconds which is around
the average time of popular music videos.

The promotional video is targeted toward fans of "Skylar and should represent the themes and concepts on her
sophomore album Free The Night.

The supporting album will be released on a Friday in December because this is desired by my target audience
and opens the opportunity to profit off of the holiday season. Prior to this, the video released in late November to
support promotional build up to album in December. This is a typical marketing strategy that is used from the lead
single to the release day of the record. However, in recent years this build up has closed in recent years from 3
months to a matter of weeks simply because contemporary audiences have a shorter attention span and my
young target audience will be the same.

Overview
The video will open and close with the male love interest (female gaze theory). This engages the
audience because they are lead to assume that he is the artist until we see the singer. Skylar will be
follow the male throughout the video and this illustrative technique will be reinforced with each challenge
she faces, which makes him harder to find. The effect is to encourage the audience to invest their
attention for the duration to find out more about this mysterious character and if Skylars search for love
is successful.

Our video will be clearly based in London and the audience will be able to see public transport used by
people in the city. This offers familiarity since the majority live in London and normalises the artist since
we do not expect celebrities to take public transport. As a result, we have challenged the industrys
construction of a star for financial gain because we have seen that audiences gravitate toward an artist
they perceive as real (i.e. Adele or Ed Sheeran). The performance scene (Steve Archers theory) will
be the interior projector which will feature several close up shots (Andrew Goodwin Star Image) to
promote the artist and make her recognisable to a new audience. With the projector scenes, the singer
will be seen wearing elaborate clothing, more makeup and different hair to show the complexity of being
both casual and formal much like an ordinary person. We are then presented with a complex
character with depth and a shallow, mysterious character. The male character will always be shown on
his phone to represent the iGeneration which is of a similar age of the target audience. This will send
the message that being engrossed in technology can lead to missing what is in front of you. The
projector allows us to merge two different moments in time and reflect the past onto the present.
Transcending time barriers in this way makes the artist seem like they are singing from experience and
gives the video a retrospective tone. We will be using a variety of different images that present different
themes: love, fantasy, abstract, utopia, nature, movement and colour. Not to mention, some
intertextuality (Alice in Wonderland and Lana Del Rey) that lets the viewer decode the meaning of the
video much quicker and offers nostalgia. We have to establish the personality of the artist during these
interior scenes, therefore, we will ask her to go in and out of lip-synching and posing. For example,
poses like sticking her tongue out will show that she does not take herself seriously.

The leading female will be seen wearing makeup because this is a hobby of my target audience and
they may be interested in these details. It is also fitting to have beauty shots to show the glossiness of
the pop genre. However, we have decided to keep the make-up and clothing casual so that the
narrative looks realistic. Realism will also be shown through the natural setting on the bridge. This type
of location has not been used in popular videos which makes it an innovative idea. It allows us to control
the movement by guiding towards or away from the subject at particular moments. Bridges represent a
journey, stability, fear and crossing over. The small space gives the effect of restriction but as we
progress, the singer is seen exploring the night. The concept of freedom from this confined space out of
love at first sight is a hopeful and positive message for the audience. The fun fair is utopia (utopian
theory) and a fun, youthful place that enforces this idea of freedom and should encourage people to
seek the same thrill in their own lives. We will be enhancing this by increasing the saturation in postproduction and using fast cuts to show the busy environment. At the very end of the video, we will leave
a cliff hanger to be continued in the next music video. This will leave the audience wanting more and
they will invest more time in watching the continuation to find out what happens after the characters
meet.

The message we are trying to convey is persistence. Our star is promoting the ideology of achieving a goal and
not giving up - embedded into a romantic plot which is conventional for the pop genre. The fans of the artist are
then expected to engage in this discourse (Dyer). The segment of our audience that is in a relationship can
identify with the theme of love whilst the single audience may aspire to have the same experience as Skylar in
the video.
The narrative is particularly interesting because it is being used for an established artist to humanise them and
create an unexpected quality. The idea is to make the search for the love as endearing as possible so that the
view can empathise with the singer. We have also challenged gender roles by allowing the female to chase the
man. This is a refreshing way of presenting a clich story that also shows the powerful female lead as someone
who knows what she wants.

We have decided to focus on the theme of movement and colour. The video will show the contrast between
speeds by manipulating the timings of shots in post-production. Some shots will be in slow motion, whilst others
will be sped up. We will also be splitting one shot (on a rollercoaster) and using both speeds to create a
disorientating effect that shows the difference between the two. The juxtaposition between dull and vibrancy will
also be explored through the locations, clothing choices and post-production colour correcting. The more rural
shots will be more dull and cool-toned for the slower parts of the song and the vibrancy of the funfair reflects the
life changing experience that occurs in the narrative. As the video progresses, the colours will become more vivid
and the pace will increase to intensify the viewers experience.

Other differences that can be pulled from the video include the balance between reality and fantasy. The
audience will be unaware if the love interest is real or not because of the camera movement which enhances the
enigmatic persona we have created. The projection during the ending makes it unclear if Skylar is imagining
herself at the fun fair or if she is actually there.

The additional clips we have prepared include a shot of two birds which symbolises love and freedom suiting
the theme of the video. Since the bird symbol will be included in my digipak, this clip will help with the cohesion of
the two products. We also have a shot of the leading male with his hood up which adds to the mystery of his

character. Along with this, we have time lapses of the sky and traffic which will be used as transitions to speed
the day up.