What is a treatment?
"A treatment is a summary of a screenplay, TV show, novel or other story, sometimes in the form of an outline. It can be anything from one to ten pages or even longer in length. Treatments can be used as a tool of development, encapsulating a story's most important elements in a more manageable format, for either the writer's own creative purposes or as a vehicle for a producer to give his or her input. Or it can be a marketing tool, a summary of your story that is easier to share with producers or others who might be considering the value of your project before they decide whether to get involved (either financially or creatively or both).
You may have already finished your entire work and are now reverse-engineering a treatment for marketing purposes (or to facilitate a pitch). Or you may see it as a starting point, a blueprint for your eventual full wor
k."
Log Line: The music video for the song 'Autumn Leaves' by Ed Sheeran follows the story of a teenage female character re-living treasured memories of her best friend and how she eventually came to lose her. Whilst remembering her best friend in a more happier light, the video also follows the character as she moves on from this, desperately trying to find closure after a bad turn of events and wanting to move on with her life.
Treatment:
For the MTV version, the video will start with a title card in the bottom corner listing the title of the song, the album it is from, the artist, the production company and the release date. This title card will be visible for the entire first scene of the view of the forest, before fading out as the second scene starts.
The main action starts by following someone's footsteps from a point-of-view perspective as the shot moves up the path to an unknown destination, with each footstep matching the strumming of the guitar in the music. The shot then fades to black and then focuses on a girl softly playing the guitar, and then she begins to sing to the lyrics. The shots will all be fairly close-up, constructing an Enigma Code for the audience as they are unable to identify who the character is and what the main plot may potentially be, creating suspense and the need to find out more by the audience.
After fading out from the girl performing the song, the shot then focuses on a low angle-shot of every-day people walking along the street, minding their own business. The clip repeats itself several times, overlapping each other, fading in and out, to give off the impression of a time lapse and that someone's take on life is that something bad has happened to cause their world to completely slow down. This also suggests to the audience that the person's story which is being told in the song is potentially going back in time, and is a distant memory.
After a repetition of similar shots of the girl performing the song, the video then follows several clips telling the story of the female character and her friend who has supposedly died on a journey into London to go bowling. Black and white shots of the underground and the escalators fade into each other before showing one of the characters throwing the bowling ball down the lane. As the next shot of the tube departing the station plays, a shot of the girl playing the guitar fades in over the shot, reflecting upon the idea that most young, talented performers may actually start out busking in london stations. Once this shot fades out, several shots of the London/Bowling scene then re-play in a non-chronological order in between repetitions of the same performance clips from the start of the video.
Once this scene has finished, the video then focuses on the two girls back at home. The central female character of the story is handed a present, which she opens to reveal a photo frame with a photo of the girls and a few other friends inside. It then cuts to several dimmer shots of the female character flipping through photo albums, looking back at other pictures of the girls together. This shot is then intermingled with other clips of the girl performing the guitar and singing the song.
These shots then fade to black, and it returns to the girl opening her birthday lesson. She pauses as she takes a long look at her and her friends in the photo frame. It then cuts to the same scene in the living room, and the girl reaches out from behind the camera to place the frame on the mantel piece. Then, slowly and softly, cards gradually begin to build up around the photo frame, completed with a cross dissolve effect. The cards represent the character's birthday and hopefully creates a warm, happier tone for the audience. Then, the dissolving continues as the cards one-by-one come down and are replaced with sympathy cards, suggesting that at this point in time someone has died, and audiences should be able to make the connection with the death and the characters' friend.
To break this up, a title sequence appears, with the lyrics, 'do you ever wonder if the stars shine out for you?' appearing to be hand-written against a background of roses. As the pace of the music increases slightly, so does the clips, with shots becoming less chronological. Close-ups of the character's eye can be seen before shots of the photo frame appear again. The eye then closes slowly and the character begins to cry. Shorter cuts of the clips we have already seen, such as the girls bowling and the public passing-by play again, before close-up images of the girl and her friends and family fade in and out between shots of flowers, supposedly resembling the girl's funeral. One last final shot of the photo frame on the mantel piece, but close than before, plays, before fading out to show the girl standing on a field. She is holding a bunch of balloons, which she slowly releases into the air. The girl turns to face the balloons as they float into the air, symbolising the girl saying a final goodbye to her friend.
The final scene is a jump-cut of the balloons as they go higher and higher into the sky, whilst the girl singing the final few lyrics of the song fades in over the top, before fading completely to black. In the MTV version, the same tile card will appear again in corner as this scene plays.
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