Narrative Idea

My main idea follows an abstract narrative however it does have some set pieces of plot. In the intro the shot shows a couple walking down the street and they hold hands. When the song “drops” the shot reverses and the couples hands break apart. The rest of the video follows an abstract montage of shots of the main male character and visual effects. There may also be some minor appearances of the female character. I plan to make use of reverse filming in the street to show the characters sense of isolation as well as the use of psychedelic visual effects. The video will end with a shot of the girl walking away or the main character standing all alone and the camera zooming out.   

Treatment

My vision of my product is of a mainly abstract video but with some elements of narrative. It will feature a male main character and a female character and some lip syncing performance. I will use a lot of reverse filming in the editing stages to reflect the theme of the song. My main mise-en-scene will be in a busy street which I will juxtapose with some scenes in a forrest/wood.

Video Research

I decided to do some research into other music videos in the psychedelic genre to find the conventions and common features. What I found were the occurring themes of abstract/surreal narratives and settings, the heavy use of visual effects, attempts to make the video feel vintage/amateur through the use of handheld cameras etc and natural settings and mise-en-scene. I decided to look at some different videos within the genre to look at how they used these features.

Half Loon- Swearword
This video by London Based band Half Loon contains some elements of performance blended with visual effects. However these visual effects are used to create a vintage style feel using sepia colours. The video follows an abstract narrative and features scenes of nature. I like how it uses a mix of features however I feel it gets repetitive with its lack of any sort of narrative structure.

Melody’s Echo Chamber- I Follow You 
This video features a heavy use of colourful visual effects along with a nature related mise-en-scene with features such as the protagonist swimming under water for the whole video and a reoccurring film of a tiger. It follows an abstract narrative that doesn’t seem to bare any relation to the lyrics and no performance elements; making it more of an art clip than a conventional music video. I like how even though it follows this abstract narrative; it still seems to suit the song very well and I love the slowly changing colours in the visual effects. However I feel like sometimes it is hard to tell what is happening in the narrative.

Allah Las- Follow You Down
This video heavily features vintage style filming techniques and a surreal narrative and setting that seem to be loosely based on the western film genre. I am a big fan of this vintage effect achieved through the use of effects such as purposely grainy filming and hand held camera filming which really gives it an old-school/amateur feel. The band themselves perform as actors while there is limited performance elements; only featuring lip syncing by the backing vocalist. I believe this video is very successful so I am struggling to find a negative point about it; however it’s lack of colourful visual effects does make it less conventional within the genre than other videos.

Temples-Shelter Song
This video is a very conventional psychedelic music video. It features performance, vintage style effects/filming, psychedelic visual effects and patterns and nature settings. I like how it uses a good mix of all the features of psychedelic videos, however I dislike how the abstract narrative seems to have no sort of order at all.

Tame Impala- Half Glass Full Of Wine This video features a heavy use of visual effects mixed with performance. It also uses a large amount of psychedelic art and animation compared to other videos; which I liked. It again follows an abstract narrative using montage editing. What I also liked about this video is that it turns the clips of performance of the song into psychedelic effects themselves, creating a very trippy feel. I also like the use of the image of a walrus which could be seen as intertextually referencing the Beatles song “I Am the Walrus” which is seen as one of the first psychedelic songs with a m video. The only thing I slightly dislike about this video is the sometimes heavy use of drawn animation whereas I prefer video and visual effects.