Feedback on our Treatment

We gave our pitch to our class and teachers and recieved a bit of feedback, summarised below:

• We don't want to overly sexualise the male at the end of the video when he is stripped down, as we do not want the male to be the main focus of the video. However, as a group we decided that we did not want a really 'small, weedy' male to play the part as everyone will feel really sorry for the male and view our band in a negative light. Therefore we thought that we would have the same actor, but we would have to make him look really stupid and goofy at the end, for example with Superman boxers and days of the week socks.
• As we do not actually play instruments in real life, they thought that it might be a good idea to fake play the instruments and play them really over the top.
• It was also suggested that we could try and break the conventions of the usual hierachy within a band by maybe swapping instruments, so there isn't the usual "frontman", as we want to band to be shown as equals. It could also mean we could incorporate a drummer, which could make us seem like more serious musicians, as then one person wouldn't be stuck at the back hidden by the drums, as we would all take equal turns. However, it could be potentially tricky as we would have to convincingly play the drums in time, which is probably harder than pretending to play the guitar.
• Ms Blackborow said that maybe we didn't need the arrival of the male painter/decorator at the end as it might be too much, so perhaps it would be better if the guy is just left on his own in his underwear, then gets up hastily and runs off with his briefcase. Alternatively, we could show the band running out and giggling down the street, perhaps with a few neighbours or on lookers wondering what is going on, especially if we decide to have the stripped down guy run out after us. We decided that the best idea would be to film the alternate endings, as they are quite simple, so then we could decide what worked best in the edit.
• The teachers also worried that if we were not being very flirty or if we were being overly sexual the viewers would read the band in the wrong way, and not in the cheeky, flirty way we wanted to convey. So they thought that we could be really cheeky and when the man comes to touch us, we could maybe slap him away with a paintbrush; being really flirty and 'hard-to-get'.
• They also thought that if we were cross cutting between the garage and the studio it may look slightly odd and not work, so suggested that we have the performance aspect of our video in the garage too. To differentiate the two set ups we would have the performance shots with instruments and perhaps a dust sheet behind us, with our band logo painted in large.
• As painting may be quite hard to shoot, a third of the video could be shots of the band setting up: tying up our hair, putting up ladders, dipping paintbrushes into the paint buckets..etc.