An unconventional band demands an unconventional promo, and this would be a love story with a difference. A girl, a boy and an animated dog in a Bizarre Love Triangle.

An animated dog is sitting on a canal towpath. Suddenly he has a whiff of something, and he’s off and running. Determination in his eyes. He’s running with a purpose.

In a series of flashbacks, we find out why he’s running.

The dog is walking with his mistress in a park, and is fetching a stick that has been thrown when he notices that she is talking with a handsome stranger. He is immediately distrustful and suspicious, and attacks the strangers leg, pulling at his trousers. The woman pulls the dog away, embarrassed, and leaves, smiling at the man.

The dog keeps on running. Fast.

Our animated hero is sat inside an apartment. He’s looking up at a closed front door, waiting expectedly. A key turns in the lock, and he starts barking. Angry and not excited. The woman walks in with the handsome stranger from the park. The dog is clearly agitated, and is twisting round to try and get hold of the man. The woman throws him outside, shutting the front door.

It’s raining. The dog climbs up on a windowsill to look in and see what his owner is doing. The woman and the stranger are sat next to each other on the couch. The dog’s face falls in despair and disbelief as the handsome stranger leans across, and kisses the woman on the lips. The drops of rain that fall around the dog turn into daggers that fall to the ground, exploding the puddles that turn into hearts all around him.

The dog keeps on running. More determined.

The dog and the man clearly do not get on. Whenever the man is around the dog goes crazy, leaping and barking like a beast possessed. His behaviour is driving the man and the woman insane, but the dog is oblivious to this. He just wants his life back to normal. But there isn’t room for three in this relationship. 

The man and woman eat dinner together in a kitchen. There’s a candle burning in front of them, but the romance is gone from each of their faces. Below them on the floor, the dog jumps around, yapping incessantly.

The dog keeps on running.

The woman takes the dog for a walk along the canal towpath. The dog runs off excitedly. He turns round to see where his owner is, but she has vanished. He chases back up the towpath to get back up to the road. He gets there just in time to see the car pull away, leaving him stranded.

His heart is broken. Shoulders slumped, he makes his way back down to the towpath.

The dog is running. Flying along the towpath. Up ahead, he sees the man and woman walking hand in hand. He increases in speed, and the man turns round, a look of horror on his face, as the dog launches itself through the air straight at his face…

Notes

The look of the dog is possibly the most crucial aspect in getting the tone of this promo right. Rather than the overly Tex Avery look of the characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or the more three dimensional creations of a Pixar film, I see the animated dog in this promo as an altogether more lo-fi character. Although able to interact in the three dimensional real world, the dog should look like a scruffy child’s drawing, and have a distinctly two dimensional look to him. I think that making him black and white will help to add to this feeling. The current characters who make up the campaign for Playstation 2 are a good example of the look I would like to create.

The dog should be able to interact, to some extent, with the world around him. Thus, when we see him pulling at the man’s trousers when they first meet, it should seem that he is actually doing so. The process of compositing in the animated shots will be made easier with careful storyboarding.

The man and the woman should both be quite cool looking (but interesting characters rather than very pretty model types), and the styling and locations should also reflect that. I see the woman living in a comfortable ground level garden flat – somewhere with windowsills that it would be possible for the dog to climb up on and look in and out from.