Treatment for Betty Curse – ‘Do you mind’
The music video starts and Megan is pleading with her boyfriend not to leave her and join the army. This scene is set in a dark dressing room with a restricting closet feel to it. He looks her in the face and tells her that he has to go. At this point the music suddenly kicks into action and she storms out of the room through a door, the video will then cut to her on a stage in the middle of a hall. Inside the hall will be young soldiers in their uniforms, they are with their girlfriends socialising and listening to the music. The rest of her band will already be on the stage and dressed in soldier’s uniforms. She walks up to the 40’s microphone, grabs it, and starts to sing the first lines of her song. For the first verse we film her performing emotionally on stage with cut ins to people in the crowd. We will have shots of men playing cards whilst smoking and laughing, couples kissing and talking.
When the chorus starts playing we cut to Megan in a white room. She is dressed in a Second World War pin-up girl outfit. She is singing and dancing around the room. Although this sounds as if it should be a happy scene Megan will have put a gothic twist on it as instead of wearing the usual bright pin up girl costumes she will be wearing black and heavy make up. This scene will carry on throughout the whole of the chorus.
When the second verse starts we then see Megan in a 1940s house at a party. There will be civilised atmosphere with people drinking and talking but the room will also be a smoky environment giving an eerie feel and leading the viewer to believe that something isn’t quite right. You pick up on Megan and her boyfriend at the back of the room and the camera draws in on them. They are talking when Megan’s boyfriend is passed a letter. He opens it and you can see from the expression on his face that he is shocked and deeply concerned. This is the moment that he is asked to join the army.
This scene continues until the end on the line ‘when the stars came crashing down’ at this point the camera will cut to a shot of everyone in the room. People will look concerned and the tables will be shaking. When it gets to the line ‘by the sound’ on the word sound everyone in the room drops down into a crouching position on the floor in unison, the room is shaking implying a bomb has just been dropped close by.
The next scene is showing Megan’s boyfriend on a battlefield. He is in a soldier’s uniform and the camera is facing him face-on. He is holding a photograph and looking at it but we can’t see what the photo is of. As he is looking at the photograph he is also mouthing the words to the song. As he gets to the line ‘what it’s like to be up there’ he looks up at the sky. His facial expression changes to fear, implying he has seen a fighter plane, and he is starting to run. He is running and drops the photo. The camera focuses on the picture on the floor and we see it is of Megan. It is of her in her pin-up costume and the camera cuts to this scene as we start the chorus.
During this chorus Megan is also in her pin-up costume but she is facing away from the camera. Towards the end of the chorus she turns around and we see the all her make up is smudged down her face and that she is crying. This scene continues until the chorus has finished.
The next verse starts with the line ‘I got myself up off the ground’ and we are back in the dance hall again. At the start of this verse we see her singing and then we cut to the crowd. All the men in the crowd are getting up from there seats and starting to leave. Their girlfriend are crying and holding onto them, begging them not to go. We stay with this scene until the end of the line ‘silent sound’.
For the short line that follows, ‘Violent sound’, we see Megan’s boyfriend running through the battlefield. The next verse starts in a different scene. Megan is standing in what appears to be the rubble of a house that has been bombed. She is singing the lines very emotionally and passionately. She is being illuminated from either side by strobe lights and the atmosphere is very smoky. At the end of this verse we start to hear the faint sound of air raid sirens.
We now cut back to Megan singing in the hall. She is singing very animatedly and she appears very angry. As the line ‘we could die together’ is sung she throws the microphone over and runs of the stage. This is now the start of the chorus and as the pace of the song starts to quicken and the drumbeats become more prominent we see Megan in the white room in her pin-up girl costume. She starts to walk towards the camera with anger across her face; she takes off her heel and throws it at the camera.
We then switch back to the battlefield and the camera is at floor level, we can see the boots of a soldier running in the mud. He will be running fast and in time with the music, which will be very effective. The scene of the muddy field will then turn to pavement and the soldier will continue running.
As the last line of the song is sung we will see the full shot of the soldier running. It is Megan’s boyfriend and he is running down the street holding a suitcase. As the song finish he will reach Megan’s bombed house at the end of his street and from behind we will see him drop his suitcase. As the songs finish the air raid siren becomes louder.
