Cherry Entertainment: December 2008

Kindred the family soul
-HOUSE OF LOVE
music video treatment

director: Matthew A. Cherry
Revised December 8, 2008

Kindred The Family Soul makes timeless music. A soulful R&B couple that takes words and makes them into songs that are vivid portrays of everyday life. A lot of R&B groups are hot for a second and then break up due to their own self serving agendas but Kindred has made it perfectly clear that they are here to stay.

“House Of Love” is a soulful and inspirational record that is very much open to interpretation. This song can be taken figuratively and applied to anyone’s life. Kindred’s vision for the record, for example, was for the song to speak on their personal journey throughout the music industry and how they had to deal with raising a family while simultaneously pursuing their dream. While this is how the song spoke to them another person may take it more literally and apply it to building a home with that special someone. When I first heard this record I personally saw more of the literal interpretation in a visual and I believe that more people would connect to it in that way as well.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition & Trading Spaces are the two television shows that first popped into my mind upon hearing the record. They are shows that have the perfect balance of drama induced emotional story telling along with fun light hearted humor. I thought that doing a take on these shows, where Kindred has their own reality show that either helps build deserving people a home or help redecorate a room in their house would be a great concept for a video. I also like the fact that it is edgy and speaks on the current housing market crisis. Of course there are a million ways to approach an idea like this, but at the end of the day a simple story about a family that everyone can relate to trumped all other ideas. Of course there is the issue of who would be the family to star in the video but with Kindred’s previous videos establishing the fact that they are a beautiful and happy couple I think it is time to see them branch and play a co starring role in the video as the shows host.   Now for the concept.

Picture opens up of a beautiful establishing shot of a Philadelphia looking neighborhood. During the first verse we will meet our main character, Richard, who plays our husband in the story and we see him looking outside his window. Throughout Richards introduction to the audience Fatin is singing his verse and we will inter cut his performance shots accordingly. We see a truck pull up and Fatin and Aja get out of the truck along with a film crew.   We see Richard coming out of his house and shaking hands and greeting Fatin and Aja and thanking them for coming out. We will inter cut our professional film looking footage with our B camera from the POV of the reality show film crew.   We also show shots of Richard getting interviewed.

It should be noted here that we will also intercut performance sequences of Fatin and Aja throughout the entire song. We want to do three performance set ups. The first being in front of a white wall with 19 picture frames of different houses and couples in front of their houses. This wall will be referred to as the House Picture Wall Set. The second set up will be in front of what we will call a wood wall set. It is a wall that was made from %100 natural tree bark, and you have to see it to believe it but trust me that you will LOVE it. Our final performance set up will be in the actual house that we shoot in. We will figure out the exact location in the house on the day and see what makes the most sense in regards to location.

When the first chorus begins we will get deeper into the story, as our audience tries to figure out what is going on. We see Fatin and Aja bringing the husband over to the back of the truck. They open the gate and we see a truck full of presents and baby stuff. Strollers, cribs, rattles, etc. We see Fatin and the husband hop inside the truck and we see Richards reaction. We also see this footage throughout the POV of the reality show camera.

The second verse begins and fittingly as Aja begins to sing her verse we get into the wife’s story line. We see a shot of our pregnant wife, “Christina” sitting in her office looking at pictures of her and her husband together. We inter cut this footage with performance shots and a continuation of Richards story. We see Richard, Fatin and Aja going into the house and picking out the room where the baby stuff will go. It is an old computer room. As they get ready to move a desk Christina picks up the phone to call her husband. We see our husband step away to answer. We see a little of their interaction and they both hang up. As she hangs up we rack focus and see an ultrasound picture taped up near her work phone in the background.

When the second chorus begins we continue with the back and forth of our stories with Christina and Richard. We see various shots of her at work and shots of him setting up the baby room. We see Fatin and Richard removing the computer and the desk from the room making it totally clear. We also now see some shots of Aja sitting down beginning to wrap up gifts. We then see Fatin and Richard leaving to go outside to bring the stuff in. We see Fatin handing a baby crib from inside the truck down to Richard. We then see them both bringing this item into the house and into the room making it the center piece for the new life that is about to join them shortly. We then do a montage sequence when we see the room coming together and now a blank room with just a crib is now a full on baby room with a changing table, dresser, carpet, toys, etc. We continue on with shots of our husband getting interviewed and shots of our wife at work doing random boring stuff like sending an email. We cut back to the living room and show the husband going through the gifts. He spots some building blocks and he makes a name Lanna and takes the completed name and places it on top of the dresser. It is the perfect finishing touch as we pull back and see the completed room. We now see the finished room that is full of toys and baby items from both the husbands perspective and that of our reality show.

When the bridge begins we see the wife at work looking at her clock as it nears 5:00pm. We do a super tight shot on the digital clock turning from 4:59 to 5:00pm. We see Fatin and Richard putting the finishing touches on wrapping the last gift. We see Aja step in with her party clothes on and holding a glass of sparkling cider and some baby balloons. We see shots of people approaching the door and coming inside the house. We also now see that Richard and Fatin have also changed their clothes as well. We see a shot of Richard opening the door for a guest and grabbing the gift from them and placing it in the huge pile of gifts on the floor. We see Richard telling everyone to quiet down as his wife is about to pull up. We see Christina pull her car up to the front of the house where the truck was parked earlier. We see a shot of her walking up to the front door. She opens the door and suprise! Everyone comes out. Christina is now another expecting mother whose life will now be a little easier thanks to Kindred’s new reality show “The Arrival”.

When the third and final chorus begins Christina runs up to her her husband. She play hits him and they hug and embrace. People come up and offer congratulations. All the while the reality tv show crew shoots away and we intermix the professional footage with the reality show footage. We see the camera crew interview the both of them. We then see the husband bring the wife into the newly decorated baby room. He flips the light switch and voila! She is speechless and begins tearing up. The camera crew catches it as she makes her way though another interview. Then Christina and Richard come back into and begin to open up some of the presents. We pan up to the ceiling as they open gifts and celebrate on the same couch that they watch tv on and pan back down and show our couple 6 months later with a beautiful baby in their arms and they’re watching their episode on tv. As the music fades out we show a shot of Aja placing a picture of our married couple Richard and Christina onto our house picture wall. There is a placard that says Season 1 Episode 20. We fade out.

Again even with this revised treatment I believe that we can accomplish a successful video for not a lot of money. I will be using a combination of HD DV with film lens along with traditional DV footage to go back and forth between the story being told like a traditional music video and it having a reality show feel. Besides the look I also feel that shooting DV will minimizing film costs in production. This video will serve two purposes, one being to promote the record and the second is to land Fatin and Aja their own reality show entitled “The Arrival” which will deal with them helping expecting families set up their homes for their new baby arrivals. The video for “House Of Love” will show Fatin and Aja in a hosting role and should help networks see how good and comfortable they are being in front of the camera as reality show hosts. I hope you consider me to work with you on this project as I really think we could create something visually stunning as well as incredibly dynamic. Thank you for your time.

~Cherry
© Cherry Entertainment, 2008