Treatment

Narrative

Following Levi-Strauss’ theory, the music video will have a non-linear storyline, because it features flashbacks. I believe  that if a non-linear narrative is included this would engage with the audience emotionally allowing the audience to see the protagonist’s, Christina, side of the story and her memories which would immediately create a deep connection between the audience and the protagonist. Moreover, for the narrative there will be majority of close up as well as mid shot scenes which will allow the protagonist to give direct audience to the audience, this will allow the audience to follow Christina in her journey from having a loving relationship with a boy she cared about to that love being manipulated and used to his advantage. However, through the heartache there will be a hybrid of emotions from envy to anger, even though Christina knows she is being used she can not help but go back and be his ‘other women’ as long as she gets want she wants which is him. Throughout, we discussed that we would show majority of the footage of the protagonist on her own so that she has experiences on self-reflection and expresses this reflection on to the audience, again giving direct address so that they sympathise and can relate to her on a personal level.

Locations

The locations featured are; Brixton, Knightsbridge, and Oxford Circus. However, we decided to also film in spaces such as, Isabella Plantation, St. Duncan’s in the East and Greenwich Foot Tunnel. We wanted to subvert typical conventions of the R&B genre by also surrounding the protagonist with nature, as the conventions usually show the protagonist to be in a sexual environment. Having the nature scenes are to exhibit Levi-Strauss’s ‘binary opposites’ theory, as the protagonist’s mannerism is quite too sexual and dominant, and we wanted to see her in nature, because traditionally women were supposed to be sensitive like flowers, but she subverts this and acts completely different.

Character profile

The main character, played by Christina, has somewhat a mixed signal personality. At the beginning, she says “You say you got a girl. But how you want me? How you want me when you’ve got a girl?” This lyric shows that she is quite civil and doesn’t agree with affairs and ruining relationships. However, it is quite evident that she has changed her mind- “Gettin' all in your love, Fallin' all over love”. At this point she’s in love with him, but he’s not showing her the same affection. After this, she reveals signs of envy because she’s jealous of how much time her love interest is spending with his own girl, “Like is you comin' home? Is you out with her?”.  The protagonist becomes greedy and completely opposes her feelings before about the private engagement and starts to plead for more days with the man she’s having an affair with- “I gotta say I'm in the mood for a little bit more of that. I mean I'm saying what kind of deal, just two days? I need me at least 'bout four of them”. To conclude, the character profile detailing the protagonist is quite varied as she goes through many stages within the song that it’s harder to depict her actual personality. Looking back, I’ve come to release that it’s almost as if she’s going through the five stages of grief. Denial- She loves a man that doesn’t love her back. Anger- She becomes angry when she only gets her man on the weekends, bargaining- she starts begging for more days, depression- when she becomes paranoid whether he’s out or if he’s with his girl. The last stage is acceptance- this is heard when she speaks directly to the other woman and says “You're like 9 to 5, I'm the weekend. Then just send him my way. Think I got it covered for the weekend”. The symbolization of grief in this situation is actually the loss of the man, who has lost interest in the protagonist and that’s why he spends more time with his own girlfriend.

To Camera, Story, or Mix

Our music video has a mixture of to camera and story elements. To further our understanding of Andrew Goodwin’s theory of music videos being of ‘Illustrative, Amplifying, Contradicting’, we chose to use Illustrative because the lyrics of the song, follows a women sharing her man with another, which would be clearly shown in our production video. Furthermore, the protagonist’s character development is also shown when she looks directly at the camera to reveal that she was once fierce and dominant but at the end she became more accepting of the situation she was in even though she hated it, so in her own way she became submissive.