Song: Lorde – Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Location: An extremely neat small apartment belonging to the despondant veteran and a large garden/plot of land with numerous oddities such as crumbling ruins and disused pools.
Background: A war veteran is struggling to pick up his life as it was left before the war, as he has had to witness the horror of his friends deaths, mutilations and more. He has returned to a world that has moved on from the war, which is something he is incapable of doing. He has no family that we know of, and is staggeringly lonely and depressed. He suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and has horrific nightmares, as well as always feeling restless.
Performance: We see him wake up before six o' clock, cleaning his bed so it is immaculate as he was taught to do so during the war. He has renewed purpose today as he sets to writing a letter and donning his military uniform, retrieving his medals from a case on the wall and putting them on his lapel. We don't know what he is preparing for. This is intercut with visuals of him appearing depressed and slow, disliking his slow life, unable to even drink wine because it reminds him of the blood of his comrades. We see him getting more disturbed, even suffering terrible nightmares in which he stumbles around the dimly lit garden, seeing his brothers in arms with their injuries fresh, frozen in time in his memory. Eventually, we see him outside, dressed in his full uniform, looking into the sun as he salutes one final time, raises his pistol to his head and shoots himself, joining his comrades in the fate he felt he deserved during the war.
Camera: Extensive use of long shots on a tripod as he sits thinking about his future or lack thereof, use of close ups (with shallow depth of field) to show his despair. Juxtapose all this stillness with jerky, handheld footage during the nightmare scene to create a clear difference between reality and dreams.
Costume: He wears unfashionable Grandpa clothes the majority of the time, to highlight how he is out of touch with fashion and no longer cares for his looks. Later he wears a full military kit which is absolutely pristine.
Lighting: There is a flashing red light when it is the nightmare scene, which bathes him and his comrades in blood red light. There is soft, cold lighting during the unhappy day scenes, but bright, lens flare filled sun when he goes to kill himself, as if he has finally made peace and gone to heaven.
I think a much more powerful ending would not be him killing himself - as this seems a little too... "easy" to do for an ending. I think a more powerful ending would be wherein the protagonist, neglected by society for his trauma, crawls into a ball and (with a high angle shot) of him in the darkness, which would show him as fragile and at the point of desperation.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, using a pistol in the video will (although there are videos that make use of weaponry) make the video seem a little less artistic. That's simply a matter of personal opinion and may also be something that will generally be frowned upon during the viewing.
Furthermore, I think his civilian costume should be as normal as possible. This would connote that he is trying to fit in again, as well as him hiding his actual trauma from society - He's a solider, after all. He's "supposed" to be a strong character.