Wow, write a treatment for a video from Game Theory? With the band actually maybe reading it? Yall know how to set off fireworks, I'll give you that. It's enough to get me to register for the board anyway. Even it it's just a pity video (a pityeo!) that's still cool asking for input.

This is all stream-of-conciousness-ish, so forgive any rambling.

Song Choice:

If all things were equal (and when's the last time that was ever true), I would love to do a video for Here I Come. To me, this is the single track, this is the song that will make people sit up and take notice*. I think would be the most visually interesting song to do. However, there's already a mini-video for it and you don't want to just throw that work out. Also it would probably be the most expensive to shoot, the song is begging for a lot of movement and impact, and for the most part that costs money. Most of the ideas I've got off the top of my head have got explosions or car chases or some James Bond shit going on, and that can't be cheap. :)

Clock With No Hands...sorry, I don't see it. You could make a decent video, but songs as personal and sparse as that don't really make great video material. It's like making a video for A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre....eeewww. It's better off without a video.

Baby is a nice choice, but it's a little short. That'll keep costs down, but if you're only going to get a certain number of plays, it'd be nice to have each of those plays be longer then three minutes. In marketing land, a four minute song gets you 33% more exposure then a three minute one! I think it would be the most fun to do a video for though.

Long Time is obviously the popular choice. I just think the obvious video, you know, shots of Philly, nostalgia, kids playing on the corner, etc., isn't exactly going to set youtube on fire. Sure it fits the song, and the video should have some element of that, but giving people just what they expect doesn't really help sometimes, it just fails to hurt. I think if you do this one, you've got to do something at least a little unexpected.

For now, I'll do a mini treatment of Long Time, but I may come back and do one for Baby as well.

Long Time Improv Mini Treatment:

Well for one thing, I love the picture on the back of the CD, of the group at the poker table. I think that could be the centerpiece of the video, the group playing poker in the streets of Philly, near the old haunts yall grew up in. The surroundings change, but The Game stays the same.

Sometimes group members get distracted or pulled from the poker game by the things that distract all of us in the real game: women, money, drugs, violence, family, murder, politics, and religion, :) etc. Sometimes The Game is going smooth, other times it's bitter and tense, with arguments and flare ups. People from outside the game hover around, and sometimes join in, leave, take people with them, and here the band can incorporate events from their own lives. Maybe Malik is missing for 2/7ths of the video or Peedi can jump in for his verse, whatever. The idea being everything around the game is always changing, but the game itself continues on.

One thing that might work is to make it time-ordered, going from when you were kids, to when you all started getting some success to now, changing clothes to reflect what you all were rockin at the time. Or even better, maybe stay in the suits, but change the hair to match the scene.

Of course, throughout the video there's one chair that stays empty, but his place is always there. I don't think I gotta spell it out for you folks, but maybe putting the letters JD on the back of the chair will help the ignant.

At the end, the game tenses up and one by one everyone pushes all their chips to the middle. Everyone stands up and flips their cards over, and we back away from the table before we see what's on the cards. We do see their reaction though, first a little surprised, then laughter, then a litte sadness as they look over to the chair, and we fade to black.

That's the rough cut, I can get more detailed about specifics later on if it's wanted.



* I've been wrong before on this before though. When I first heard Bombs over Baghdad, I thought it was going to take over the planet I was so hyped about it. Turned out it was kind of polarizing though, some people *hated* it with a passion. It wasn't until Miss Jackson (oooh!) that Stankonia really caught on with the mainstream.