Music Video Treatment Example and Template
A treatment is the pitch of a music video: the idea, the story and the look on a few pages, before anything is shot. Here is one for Remember Home, a narrative music video by ELYAZ, followed by a template to write your own.
The treatment
- Title
- Remember Home, by ELYAZ. Narrative music video, 2021.
- Logline
- A traveler finds a mysterious radio in an old garage, and a secret combination opens it onto memories.
- Concept
- Memory as a journey. The radio plays the past like a radio show, where you can be whoever you want.
- Story
- In an old garage, between cart wheels and a dusty white Fiat 500, a traveler in a long black coat finds a vintage radio.
- He turns the dials, the tuning meter lights up, and the song begins.
- A drawer under the radio holds six colored cards: the secret combination.
- The signal reaches space: a space station, radio telescopes, the Earth seen from orbit.
- The memories: a couple on a motorcycle with glowing helmets, a city of lights, a woman sipping her tea, a red planet, a rider crossing red sands alone.
- Back in the garage, he types a new combination.
The ending stays out of this page on purpose.
- Characters
- The traveler, played by ELYAZ. The memories: the couple on the motorcycle, the woman with the tea, the rider on the red sands.
- Look and feel
- Warm, dusty daylight in the garage. Then night blues and neon: a highway, a city of lights seen from above, mirrored skylines, a red planet. The palette, measured from the finished video:
- Locations
- An old garage in the countryside, shot on location. The space, city and desert scenes come from footage filmed around the world.
- Sound
- The radio is part of the song: the sound design and the foley were made by the same person who made the music, Mauro Elias Morone.
- Team
- Director, editor and VFX supervisor: Mauro Elias Morone. Director of photography and radio VFX: Federico Faccioli. Costumes: Marina Mazzoli. Cards: Francesco Aloisi.
More music video treatment examples
Break the Distance · Parallel stories and performance
- Logline
- A child, a horseman and a traveler: three stories in the same land by the sea, moving toward the same place.
- Concept
- Three times of one life, told in parallel, with the traveler singing and playing the guitar between them.
- Look and feel
- Warm, sunburnt colors: dry fields, sea cliffs, red earth hills, a small lake inside the red earth and a blue sky.
- More
- The vision behind Break the Distance
The Place Where We Belong · Narrative, told by a narrator
- Logline
- In an ancient library, an old book tells the quest of a sea dog looking for his lost love.
- Concept
- A fantasy tale inside a book: the narrator reads, and the story comes alive.
- Look and feel
- Candlelight and old paper in the library, then green forests, waterfalls, ruins, the sea at sunset and pirate galleons.
- More
- The vision behind The Place Where We Belong
Wildlands · Concept
- Logline
- A girl walks into the wild, through landscapes that hide and protect a secret.
- Concept
- Built around an idea and its symbols rather than a plot: the power of the earth, and a journey home.
- Look and feel
- Deep greens and stormy blues, with flashes of fire and gold: storms, waterfalls, a volcano, misty forests and black sand beaches.
- More
- The vision behind Wildlands
Template: the sections of a music video treatment
- Title and logline
- Song, artist, length and type of video, and the whole idea in one sentence.
- Concept
- What the video is about, in two or three lines.
- Story
- The main moments in order, matched to the song.
- Characters
- Who appears, and who plays them.
- Look and feel
- Colors, light and references. A moodboard helps.
- Locations
- Where it is shot, and what each place brings.
- Sound
- Anything you hear beyond the song: effects, silence, voices.
- Team
- Director, camera, costumes, effects.
Next step: turn the story into a script, with the time of every scene.