The song we have chosen is 'Mad world' by Gary Jules.
I have also included the first treatment that I have written for this video:
The music video starts with a wide angle shot, on
the top of a roof roughly mid day in the midst of a bustling city. In this shot
we can clearly see a person standing by the balcony looking down over the city.
With his hands folded together leaning resting on the verge of wall. After a
few seconds of filming the singer, the camera pans down facing the street from
a bird’s eye view, where we can see several people dressed in dark clothes,
creating shapes of objects and vehicles using physical and total theatre. This
song in general is criticizing Communism since it was written in 1984 and the
lyrics themselves are against indoctrination, making people follow a specific
scheme or routine in order to become the ‘Perfect citizen’.
After this the camera then pans back up to the
singer and zooms in slightly, before returning to the performer’s on the
ground, there are also several onlookers in this video walking past and
watching although I believe that this adds effect to the video, since this is
defiantly an entertainment based video because there is no noticeable story or
narrative behind this video. Despite this there is a school bell sound effect
before the performers rush out onto the pavement; this could suggest that the song
could be related to the visual style of the video. Furthermore I have broken down
the song into its respective stanzas explaining what each one is about:
1.
This stanza symbolizes the perspective of an
average age man or woman, in which they lead a very dull and repetitive life,
where everyone is trying to do their best and get on, but are still not
satisfied with their lives.
2.
In this stanza we see that the main character is
trying to show that everyone desires a change in their lives, however we are
living in a what is called and ‘equilibrium’, it is because of this that we are
forced to hide our true feelings in order to fit into society. This results in
a bleak world with nothing to live for. Hence the “...no tomorrow, no
tomorrow...” this means that tomorrow people won’t exist.
3.
In the first chorus we can see that the element of
irony is portrayed in that the main character lives in a society which is
supposed to be the pinnacle of perfection and happiness but no such happiness
really exists, this frustrates the protagonist in the respect that everyone is feeling
depressed yet no one wants to change anything, the second line really
emphasises this point where he believes that death is the only true escape.
4.
In this stanza we are told about the main
characters child hood, where children are not allowed to be happy and are
longing for something that doesn’t exist, whilst at the same time being told
that if they wait long enough and are patient it will come. They are groomed
into a ‘perfect society’ and are ordered to obey authority without hesitation
or doubt.
5.
Finally the last stanza is about the main character
being introduced into society. As a child they feel that no one knows them
because they have somehow retained some shred of individuality, however as time
progresses the main character feels more oppressed and lost, asking the only
figure of authority in school, in this case the teacher, what to do “What’s my
lesson” but is ignored this is shown in the lyric “looked right through me”,
the chorus line is then repeated referring to the previous message, with the
slight change suggesting that people should “enlarge your world”, encouraging
others not lead boring and tedious lives.
After much deliberation our group decided that it would be the song 'Mad world' by Gary Jules for the following reasons:
- Nice melody.
- More effects to include.
- Numerous camera angles to include.
- The opportunity to include elements of varied speeds.
- More suitable venues to perform in.
- Clear lyrics to lip sync.
