Creative Filmmaking: Crafting Your Vision for Music Videos

1. Introduction: Hello, my name is Isaiah Seret. I'm a music, video and commercial director in Los Angeles, California. I say my style is cinematic and visual with a focus on storytelling. The title of this course is Creating Music Video Treatment, and treatment writing is all about creating a document that can communicate your vision and your intentions and your story to your creative team, to bands, to Ad agencies, to record labels, any of the folks that are needing to see what you have in store. Today, I'll be focusing on the written treatment which combines images and text in a complete package, something that you can send off to folks and trust that your vision will be adequately conveyed. The top three things you're going to learn today are first, what makes a music video treatment exciting? What makes it really come off the page? Second, I'll go through some of the building blocks and chapters that you may want to include in your written treatment. Third, we'll focus on layout and image research. I think this class is great for anyone who is interested in making film and video especially short form content. Music video form is something that's usually submitted to bands or record labels, but at the same time, this is the same process I use to submit commercial treatments to clients, and also, the treatment I found is really valuable to convey my vision to my crew, and my cinematographer, production designer, costume designer, all the key people that come together to create the vision. This is the DNA, the document that actually keeps our intention cohesive during a very chaotic time. 2. What is a Treatment?: The main way I'd like to think about a music video treatment is a road map for all the different teams, and it starts with yourself really horning your vision. The second audience is the band and anyone connected to the band, the record labels, managers, whoever else is involved. If that gets approved, the music video treatment becomes a way to communicate your vision to crew. Folks that you've already signed up to work with you and then folks that you may want to reach out to see if they're interested in collaborating on the film. So, those are kind of the three general audiences of the music video treatment. Again, there's so many aspects to film making, there's the production elements, there's the logistics, there's the story, there's the production design division, the wardrobe, the casting, locations. I mean, there's such a ball of moving parts. As a director, you can only connect with so many of those and then others you need to expect folks to step up and help you achieve. So, this treatment is really the primary force that keeps all the teams working towards the same goal. So, in my experience, I've either created music videos through directly reaching out to bands I know and that's really, for me that was the place to start. I wasn't a big enough director to be working with record labels who often commissioned music videos. To build up my own wheel, I made videos for $500, $1,000, just as little as I could and then use those videos to reach out to the next band and the next band. I wasn't trying to create a big online website or profile, I actually wanted to keep a low key approach where I'd make a video, make it as good as I can and then use that in a very targeted way to get an opportunity to pitch with the next band. So, that's kind of the general environment for making music videos, but also I think you know, this treatment writing process can be really helpful even if you're not making something for a specific song. As I mentioned before, it doesn't need to be for music video, you can write something for a short film, fake commercial, really anything that you're interested in creating. Treatment will become a really powerful tool. So, I'd suggest for any of the folks taking this class don't feel disheartened if you don't have a band that you're ready to work with right away. I think this can actually be a process that will build a skill set that can help you really understand your own voice and the type of videos you want to make. Ultimately, by having that better understanding when you do have an opportunity to make a music video for a band, you'll be one step ahead in terms of this process. In the next few lessons, we'll go through first how to introduce your vision to your audience. Second, we'll discuss the story or script element which is kind of the core building block of a treatment. Third, we'll go through some of the other building blocks. Some of the other chapters you may want to include. Fourth, we're going to discuss sort of image research and creating visual presentation for your treatment and finally we we'll discuss layout and how to bring all these different ingredients together into something that feels really exciting. 3. Introducing Your Vision: So, I will start my introductions in a personal way. I mean, this isn't an essay. This isn't homework. Introduce yourself, I say, "Hi.", and I say why I'm excited to be part of this project, and I say, "What makes my voice unique in being part of this film?" I think that's a really important thing because if they don't understand why they picked you over someone else, they probably won't. So, I think after you've introduced yourself and why you're excited about the project, the most important part of the introduction is communicating your vision simply, in say two to three sentences. Letting people understand what you want to tell, why it's relevant, why it's exciting, but in the short and concise way. So in a way, pitch for the band Cults for their song Go Outside, was simply that I wanted to put the band inside historical footage from Jonestown. I want to hear them singing it. It was a very musical world and that in essence is that video. While, it's really simple to say, "I want to put the band inside this stock footage." Achieving is obviously an incredible technical challenge and that's what I spend the rest that treatment and the next weeks and weeks actually trying to accomplish. So one example I like is the treatment that I wrote for Devendra Banhart for his song, Fur Hildegard. For that treatment, the intro page was simply this sentence, "Hildegard is a story of a Nun who becomes a VJ. " So in one sentence, you understand that Hildegard is a Nun and she's going to go off and have her career as a video jockey. Playing music videos was on MTV basically. So, with these three elements of introducing your idea, you can definitely play with the format. You may want to say, why you're excited about the film, what makes you unique, the intro. You may want to say that on the last page, you may want to say just your summary on the first page to make it more dramatic. The main thing is, why your voice is important for the project, and why you're excited about the project, and what is this film? Another example is from my MGMT treatment. On the first page, I just had that summary. What is this story? For that, it reads,"Planet hunter is the story of an illegal plant trade, inspired by films like Adaptation, New Jack City, and Repo Man, mashed into 80s sci-fi environments with a touch of Guy Bourdin photography and a deeply ominous narrative all its own." So, if you have an idea in mind, I'd totally encourage you to start here. There's a great place to really hone in your vision and let yourself and your audience know why you are excited about this project. 4. Finding Inspiration: Then, in terms of inspiration, inspiration is a very elusive topic. But I'd say when it comes to music video, for myself, my inspiration always comes from the song and just listening to the song again and again and again and trying to figure out what each element of the song says to me. That can become a way of, just almost like journaling, writing notes, this baseline feels haunted, this vocal feels spacious. Then, those things haunted and spacious and how you get from one to two, it could be your narrative. So, I feel like there's a lot of ways to dissect a song. Also lyrics, lyrics have a lot of information in them as well. So, the inspiration has to come from the song, and then at a certain point, you may feel a little stuck with a song and then you turn off the song and you see what arises in your mind. Ultimately, if it is for specific song and you're needing inspiration support, really lean on the song to find it and to decode the song, to really understand what's the emotion and the story or the visual that speaks to you within it. 5. Script and Story: So the most important part of any treatment is really the script and story section. This is where you walk your audience through step-by-step how you see it in your mind and how it plays out on the screen. So, I think I've written treatments that are only an introduction and a script section. It's really the most important thing for any treatment. So, this is your mini-screenplay. This is where you introduce all the different elements. There's a few ways to break it down. For music videos, I've often done by verse or chorus. I don't write to every single piece of it, but I'll pull in lyrics that are chapter markers to help my audience know where we are in the story. So, I think the most important thing about a script is to be as descriptive as possible, to not just say, "Oh, the guy walks into the room." To really say how we're going to see it. The cameras on the ceiling, we see the top of his head enter through the door. Whenever the shots are in your mind, really try and pull them out, really try and put them down on paper so it's as visual and descriptive as possible. You can talk about things like, what's the light like that morning? Is it coming in through the windows? Is it dark out? Is it moody? What's the atmosphere like? Is there a haze in the air? Is there water on the ground? So, I think all of these descriptive elements can help tell the story. At the same time, if you're doing anything that's narrative-based, I really like talking about emotion, what's the experience of this for your hero? Then you have these ingredients, and now is the time where you bring them all together step-by-step. We open on iDesk. We open on the sky. We pan down to reveal. So, here we're dealing with filmmaking language, which is all about what you want to see and where you want to see it, what the audience sees, what the audience doesn't see. We're building setups while creating payoffs. Especially in narrative filmmaking, this is screenwriting and this is your mini-version of the screenplay that's contained within the body of your treatment. Then for a treatments that are primarily visual, you may not need a narrative format to your story or your script. For that, you may want to actually just describe your setups. You're going to see the artists do this dance performance or this light effect will be playing in the air. For the visual setups, it's the same thing. You need to be as descriptive as possible, still describe the camera work, still describe how the ingredients are going to come together as concise as possible. Then as your script builds, you should really try and help the reader go on a journey. It's a visual journey. It's an emotional journey. I think, this is more into the theories around storytelling, which for that, I know there's a lot of other resources, and I'm not going to go into that deeply. But, I think the main thing is you want your video to be exciting beginning to end and you want your treatment and the story section to be exciting beginning to end. For my own personal preference, I like to let things start big and then build into a broader narrative and then have some climactic moment, some payoff in the end. A reason to actually go through this whole journey. But for yourself, if there's a different filmmaking style that speaks to you, that really reflects your intention, let that drive this story's action. Then from here, I mean, it's like all the rest of your treatment, if you choose to include other sections about craft, about production, if you choose to include those, all of those are simply going to be to support how you're going to achieve this story. So, one takeaway from my early years of pitching a lot of music videos and not actually getting them made was the ones that got made were the ones that people could actually see being made, that they felt like this video is achievable, and it's exciting, and it fits the song, it fits the breath. When all those things line up, that's when you have something that you have a very good chance of creating and also you have a very good chance of making well. But again, when you're writing treatments that are unrealistic, especially if they're heavily unrealistic, then you have very little chance of getting it made. However, if it sounds unrealistic on paper, but in your mind and in your heart, you know how to achieve it, then it's really important in these next sections that we'll go through to detail how you're going to achieve this script that you've just presented. 6. Building the "World": So, beyond the story and script section, there's some other stuff you may want to include in your treatment, and this could come before the story and script, after the story and script, it doesn't really matter. I think whatever makes the most sense, but basically, your story and script details this world that you want to create. Then, there's other supporting sections that can say how you're actually going to create it. So, these are sections like cinematography or locations or production design, things that you want to call out and talk about in detail. You want your story and script to be exciting to read, so you can't load it up with a lot of details that may make it frankly boring. You want it to read well and keep the audience in the moment. So, that's one piece. Then, the other piece is the sort of basics of the filmmaking process that you want to apply to this story. So, these extra sections can be thought of as like building blocks, different blocks that you can insert when relevant. You don't have to always include every one of them, but I'll just go through a few and say some of the things you may want to include in those sections. So, often, I have like a larger section that talks about the look and the feel of the film. In that, I'll talk about things like the cinematography. What's my camera work going to be like? Are my shots going to be slow and steady? Are they going to be handheld? Is it going to feel like a documentary? Is it going to feel like we're floating, what's the motion of the camera work? You could also talk about things like, what camera you want to use? Do you want to shoot on film, video, iPhone? What the format is and how that format will influence the look? So, here, with cinematography, you talk about what the lighting is like, what the atmosphere is going to be. Atmosphere in filmmaking is things like rain or fog or mist or any of the things that may affect the mood of the film. Another section that I would consider part is bigger look and feel will be on production design or even costume design. Here, I'll talk about what the worlds are going to look like. Especially, if it's me saying it's like a non-ordinary world, non-ordinary meaning it's not present day, it's not supernatural, it's not documentary. So, this may mean something science fiction like my MTV film, talking about some of the different textures and materials that we wanted them to use. Some of the lighting and some of the references. Some of the other things I've done they've had more of a period look. This is going to feel like a 60s drama, 60s Sci-Fi, whatever sort of references that you've been working with to create the visual world are things that you should pull out. Right now, I'm taking a lot of things that maybe some more cinematic, but a lot of music videos are also purely visual. So, for some of those, you may want to talk about art or someone's Instagram profile or whatever it is that's actually inspiring your work. One of the most important things of this look and feel section is actually to let the audience know, yes, these are your inspirations, but what is it about your vision in this story that's going to make it your own? Because I think there's a big conversation now about, what is derivative and what is inspired? To be honest with ourselves as artists, we need to understand that we are inspired by the world. We're inspired by everything, and these influences will become part of our DNA, and they'll become part of our films. But at the same time, we don't want to go out and just rip off someone's vision. I mean, that's a derivative form of the ultimately never looks as good as the original and won't actually feel like something true to you. I think one of the exciting things about filmmaking is developing your own voice and letting that voice be seen by the outside world. So, part of your voice is all these different influences and all these different inspiration, but also, understanding how you're using this ingredient in a different way to tell a different story, to tell a different emotional narrative, to bring the audience into a visual experience that speaks to you personally. 7. Locations, Talent, Pacing: So, another one of these building block sections I feel like is really important to include is about the locations. Here, I'd like to talk about where I'd like to shoot, how I'm going to go about finding it, budgets and issue, how we're going to afford it and what sort of elements at the location may be used to influence our story? Actually, in a lot of my early music videos, I would find a location that spoke to me and then, write the story based on that location. I do this because, honestly, the location is such a difficult aspect of low-budget filmmaking and it makes all the difference. I mean, if you can find a place that has production value already, then your film is going to look so much better than if you find a raw space and you have to build in the production value. So, I think locations are really important section and it's worth actually tailoring a story treatment to work with the location that you have access to. Equally important to locations I'd say is casting. If it's a music video and you're just working with the musician, you're probably in good shape. But, if you need anyone else involved, it's really important to talk about who they are. If it's a narrative thing talking about their character, and what that character means to you, and what sort of actor you're going to go out and try and find in order to play that character. The difference between good filmmaking and student filmmaking, I'd say, 80% of that is in your actor. If your actor has a certain sort of charisma and visual presence, your project will feel very accomplished and polished. If your actor is a little shaky and isn't able to actually deliver in the role that you're giving them, then no matter how good anything else looks your film will always be reduced to not quite believable and you won't really achieve the suspension of disbelief that you're aiming for with any visual piece. You really won't be able to transport the audience. So, one other section that I sometimes include is something about pacing or the edit or music and sort of how these elements all come together. So here, I'll talk about tempo. Maybe I'll say that, "I want to start in silence", "I want the music to come in a little later", "I want to do slow takes, long takes, fast edits." What's that final piece going to feel like when it's all edited together. Are they're going to be sound effects in it? Anything that you think may not make sense in the story and the script, I'd put in this extra section that talks about pacing, or edit, or music, or sound design. That said, a lot of these things are exciting to read during the actual script, so if you can get them into the script and into the story then you, obviously, wouldn't need this extra section. So, this music and pacing section, this is sort of how all your ingredients are going to come together, how it's going to finally feel in the end. For the edit part, it's talking about things like, is it going to be a slow burn? Is going to be in a fast-paced? Is it going to build? Is going to have a crescendo? Is it going to be very tranquil? What's the energy and pacing of your final cut? 8. Production Elements: So, we've talked a little bit about some of the extra building blocks you can add to your treatment. But there is one more that you may want to include which would be about the production, a production section. The reason to include this would really be to communicate how it is you're going to achieve this film on every level. You don't need to go into too many details, but I think if the whole thing takes place at a house and you don't need a location section, you could say that there's this house that you have access to, there's this camera that your cinematographer has. I mean, some of these things that can help people understand. Again, you don't need to commit this to writing. But if you feel like there's a question of whether or not you can achieve your treatment, sometimes this production section will be helpful to give people the confidence that you've been thinking about these things and you know how to get it all done, basically. Again, this is your time to address those fears, give people the confidence that you're able to achieve this. You've been thinking about the budget, you've been thinking about locations and casting and equipment rentals and all these things and let people know if there's a few top line things of how you're going to achieve them that you've been thinking about this and you have it covered. For these building blocks, I would say that I've just outlined a few, but it's really anything that you feel like is unique that you want to call out that didn't fit in the story and script section and didn't fit in the introduction. I mean, I remember some of my early treatments, I'd write a chapter called Why This Route. Why choose this route for your band and for this song. I'd call it like wouldn't the training felt special, how I feel like it fits with the band that their marketing or in some other aspect to the bigger picture. Sometimes a movie about seeing an artist in a different light. MGMT, for example, I want to create something very sharp and slick because I felt like all the previous stuff had such a low fine look to it, and that was something that really spoke to the band. They were excited to change up their image as well. So, these things, if you want to speak to it as its own building block, you can always include it. So, again, anything that you feel like is really important to your treatment, to your script that you need to spend a little bit of extra time on. You can give it its own chapter heading and one or two paragraphs just to get it across that this is a key aspect of your film and this is how you're going to work with that. 9. Image Research: So, we've just discussed about all the different parts of the writing aspects of the treatment but equally important is definitely the visual presentation. First is image research and second is layout and design. So, what I'm calling image research is really the process of grabbing a whole lot of visuals that can support your vision. This could be photographs, images from movies, drawing, sketches, paintings, anything that you feel supports the story you're telling. But the process of gathering images isn't as simple as just googling the main topics of your film. The images that you'll find there are usually low res and also often captured by amateurs that don't really have the same cinematic values or artistic values of the film that you're trying to create. So, I'd say one of the most important tips for image collection is to use images that feel they capture the spirit of your film and are of a visual quality that's as high as the film that you're going to create or even higher. So, if you have an image that really tells the story but is low res and it's just not a great looking photograph, I would say don't include that. I would say for that aspect of the story rely on the text and for other aspects of the story that you do have quality images for, you'll use those in your file layout. So, one of the things I found really helpful for image research is just making a list of all the movies or artists or photographers or any of the elements that you feel would be relevant to the story they are trying to tell. So, in creating that list, you may come up with all sorts of keywords that you could potentially search directly. However, I would really encourage you to start by going to source material and not just Googling them because you'll actually get higher quality imagery like that. So, if you have a list of movies, you can maybe go to Netflix and do screen captures that way. You can actually run the movie and use a third party software to take screen captures. Well, there's a number blue ray image websites that may already have some of the images you're looking for in screen screenshot form. One thing to think about if movies become a big reference point for you and for your treatments, is that movies often reference photography. So, I would definitely encourage you also to get familiar with photographers. One way to do this is if you find the image that really speaks to you, figuring out who shot that image, and learning more about their body of work. If you do Google image searching, I would encourage you to use your keywords that really connect to the content you need. Don't make it generic. When we step back from this and think about, we have this story we want to tell, how do we want to communicate it visually to the audience as well? So, image research really starts with that question of asking yourself visually, what are the reference points that I can use to convey the story in this treatment or format? What I think, image research takes time and takes patience. It takes diligence and it takes this seeking and finding and exploring energy to discover things that you may not have actually known about initially. For myself when I'm tackling a treatment, I usually start with the writing. But then once I get a little tired from the writing or like writer's block or whatever it is, can't solve something, I'll usually go to image research and I do find that's a nice balance with the treatment writing because it uses a different side of my brain. So, I'll just go into that explorer mode, hunting down the different photographs that I feel will represent my project. Then, when I get a bit tired of the image research or when I find an image that can be really useful to the treatment, then sometimes that will inspire more writing. So, that's the symbiotic relationship between visual research and the treatment writing. Again, one of the biggest tips I can give you is, don't use images that are poor quality, they'll make your treatment feel unprofessional. The other thing is, you don't have to have an image for every aspect of your story. Some of your story can rely on text alone, and for those pages you may need to use something that's a little bit more generic. Something that represents the tone of your film but it may not actually capture the story or say exactly what you want to tell. 10. Layout and Design: So, once you have all these ingredients, it's time to lay it out. If you're not that savvy at graphic design, you may need to get some help at this phase. If you do feel like this is something you can take on yourself, there's a lot of graphic design software out there. I'd say the key to a good-looking treatment is, make sure all your text is readable, make sure there's a good amount of space between the text and make sure your images feel like they have a nice size and scale to them. I also think the layout style should reflect the actual treatment. If you're doing something that is very bright and chaotic, then you may want the treatment to reflect that. If you're doing something that's very minimal, you may want the treatment layout to reflect that. I personally use Apple Pages for my layouts because it's a software that I can do the word processing in and the image layout. It's definitely a lot easier than using Microsoft Word. I think if you've ever tried to insert images in Word it can become a bit dysfunctional. So Apple Pages is one software option and they also have some templates in there that may suit your needs to swap out images if you don't have someone to help you and you are new to graphic design. So, there's the treatment for my music video Go Outside for the band Cults. This is the cover image and I didn't have it high enough resolution so I actually just did a blur in the background to make up for that. This is like the intro pages where I introduce the concept of the film and again using these blurred backgrounds. Occasionally, I'll go into this purely image page without text just to kind of boost the energy of the film. Also here you'll see a lot of the stock shots that I ended up replacing people from. I replaced her with my hero and I recreated a close-up of this scene. So, here's the treatment for my MGMT music video for Cool Song number two. This one became quite its own narrative so I actually named the film Plant Hunter as well. Again, this is my intro page. I didn't bother with a greeting or anything like that. I just wanted to jump right into the narrative. I saved that intro stuff for the end. I just started teasing out the story a little bit for this one. Then these are sort of character sections so, in this case, I decided to do one for each character. This is the hunter. I know that we talked about casting and characters as its own section and sometimes there's a nice way to do that as well. Then we're onto the story which I lay out in these different sections here. I use these little numbers on the corner - see 28 right there - to say where you are in the song and then in bold I have the lyrics. So, this is my treatment for Devendra Banhart's Für Hildegard von Bingen. Here you'll see I wrote the treatment with Devendra. Because I actually wrote it with him, this treatment serves a very different purpose. It's more for the crew and for his management to get in tune with the project. This is my simple intro page and I jump right into the story on this one. Here it was hard to find the right balance of references but I just tried to keep everything in the mood and the tone. Then here I have a link to the song so that people can listen to the song while they're reading it. So, I think when I'm creating a treatment, the real judge of whether it's good or not is if it makes people excited, if it makes them want to see the film that you're presenting. I think that's the real fundamental reason for a treatment to exist. The treatment isn't the final product, it's to get people excited. 11. Final Thoughts: Because a treatment is simply to excite us into wanting to watch the final film, I think we can use the Project Gallery on this site to upload our treatments and we can each comment on the treatments. One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten on receiving feedback, is actually if you don't like what they're suggesting to do, notice where they have the issue with your project. If it's on one page, you may not agree with how they suggest to fix it, but know that there's something on that page that isn't quite clear. Again, film-making is this personal process where we're trying to express a vision, a story, a mood. Something that really speaks to us, that connects to the music, or the band, or the artistry, or the various elements that we're trying to produce here. Again, this feedback and critique, that actually should be used to just make your work better. It doesn't need to be something that lowers your self-esteem. We've all received feedback on something that we thought was great, but if we just listen carefully, we can use it to clarify the intent of the project. Ultimately, if you have a total conviction of what you have there, we always can feel free to ignore it. A few final tips for everyone, just in getting started here. When I work, the hardest part for me is the writing, so I always start with the writing. I start with the script and the story or the introduction section, but really there's no hard rules. It's sometimes nice to jump around. Wherever inspiration hits, is where I write. When I get tired of some of the writing, I can go to the image research or even the layout and design. Then again, the layout and the design and the image research can re-inform the writing aspects of it. For yourself, I really encourage you to just jump into something, even if it's just the cover page and the intro section. I think that's a great place to start, and definitely worthy of posting to the Project Gallery, to get some initial feedback. I think one of the amazing things about treatment writing, and really writing in general for film and video, is this is the time where our creative imagination is free to do and say and feel whatever it wants. Of course, those ideas will be shaped and connected to the music or the short film or whatever it is that is being produced for the outside world but I think, personally, it's so important to remember that this is actually what inspired me to be involved in film-making. The creative process and having this moment of creative freedom to do and say and express stories, ideas, emotions, visual and artistic works, and really anything that is in my head that I'm inspired to tell. Each time I sit down and try and write a treatment, I try and tune in to that initial inspiration. This is the creative process, this the creative freedom, this is why I'm inspired to make films. Really, this treatment process is the time where that's able to be expressed and formed and shaped. Once we get into production, this is our blueprint and we have to go build the house. Building the house has its own creative challenges and opportunities, but the blueprints are already set. That's one way to think about the treatments and that's one way to not feel overwhelmed by the process. Thanks for taking this class. I hope it was helpful for you, and I'm excited to see some of your work in the Project Gallery.