Treatment plan for ‘Britney Spears – My Baby’.
I am going to create a music video for Britney Spears’ song, My Baby, off her new album, Circus. The video will be narrative in order to interest the viewer more and keep my video flowing.
The song is gentle and timid, with lovely lyrics. This encourages me to make a slow, peaceful, yet moving video, nothing too busy, or distracting, but will still have a unique selling point. Britney (the brand) is shown in many of her videos to be provocative and alluring, my video goes against expectations as i wanted it to capture attention as something unusual, and not like the original video for this song.
The genre conventions of pop music of this sort are glitzy, glamorous music videos normally with a narrative structure, that also include choreographed dance. Video of this sort are often shot to include the female body in close up to appeal to the audience mostly men. This appeals to their voyeuristic tendencies. This is a point that Goodwin makes in his analysis of music video.
When the music first starts to play, the screen is black, and slowly fades into a clip of Britney’s hand, with a baby’s hand resting on it. This is linking the lyrics to the visuals, ‘tiny hands’, being the first line of the song.
She’ll be on her own for the first 30 seconds, in a bright lighted room, that’s quite bare, to make you focus on her and the lyrics more. A 360 degrees panning shot at eye level will be used here to capture large images of Britneys surroundings, finishing with a close up of Britneys face.
During the track, you see Britney in and around her house and garden. She’s bringing up her baby, on her own, but she is always smiling and happy. The video has been treated with an effect that bleaches out the visuals, for example, when she is walking past some lillies, the morning sun sends a lens flare across the viewers eyeline. Whilst this is happening, we cut back to clips of her earlier life, before she had the baby, and in one of them she’s in a city. There are loads of people around her, all rushing past, yet she is walking around slowly, looking really out of place.
Close ups are used throughout the video in order to create a sense of intimacy between the viewer and Britney. The close ups also show close detailing of Britneys face showing her still looking glamorous, which inspires viewers to idolize the popstar.
Because Britney is the main person in the video, and needs to stand out, during the city scenes she is dressed brightly, whereas everybody else in the scene is in black and white. There is hardly any music playing, so the basic sound is Britney singing.
The video is very growing up orientated, and all the people in it are happy, except Britney, until she has her baby. This links with the lyrics, ‘Cause without you, How did I get through, All of my days, Without you?’.
In the video, attention is grabbed by the soft, unusually quiet atmosphere, and Britneys closeness to her baby, and the sadness she displays. It makes you want to find out what’s happening in the song, which generally leads to having a popular track if more people enjoy the video.
The whole video will be based on Britneys life, featuring clips of her past successful music videos. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unBACOHFXes,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kaw6hfuQXQ0&feature=channel) It will also show clips of her leaving the recording studio, and doing previous jobs, but showing her being unhappy. Then, it will show her after having her baby, with a new found happiness, and feeling like her baby is what she's been missing for the past few years of her life.
As the video is very narrative, and tells a story of a life, there will be lots of close ups. The close ups will not just be used to capture emotion, but to help focus on tiny detail that would normally be missed, although facial expressions caught with close ups will be a important part of the video, to show the depression and new found happiness that Britney discovers.