music video storyboard

The purpose of a storyboard is simply to plan out the individual shots that you will need to take when you film your video. Creating a storyboard before you start filming is exceedingly beneficial as it saves time as you know exactly what you are doing. In addition, a storyboard will reduce the chance of your shots being incoherent and unusable; if you do not know what exact shots you want to take and just take random ones, they may not fit together when you get to editing. It also means that you will know what costume and props from the iconography to use for particular shots when filming. Creating a storyboard means that you can show other people precisely how the music video is going to be made and you can coherently talk about the video in detail. Production of the music video will be incredibly easier as it ensures you will not forget any necessary shots you need to take; it also is beneficial for when you are editing as you can put the video together in the correct order. Furthermore, if you have only planned some of the shots for the video and have started editing them, you will know which ones you have left to film and therefore it saves time.

Below are pictures of all the pages of my group and I's storyboard. As you can see, there are quite a lot of pages as we planned out every single shot in detail so that when it came to filming, we would be completely prepared and not be wasting time trying to figure out how to take the shot or forget to bring the necessary props/costume etc for the shot. We did actually forget to color in the storyboard images which would have helped in quickly knowing what the costume will be. We have decided to use the same scene we have used at the beginning, at the end as well. This is simply due to the fact that it gives a better finish and allows the audience to connect what they have initially seen to the rest of the narrative and answers any questions they may of had at the beginning of the narrative.

To plan the music video for the song "Salvation", I had to use both my primary and secondary research that I carried out previously. The primary research I carried out by producing a questionnaire relevant to the music video advocated in the planning of the music video as it allowed me to gain more insight into people's preferences of what should be in the music video. For instance, within the questionnaire, we asked 40 people whether they prefer indie artists who play musical instruments in their music videos; 47% said yes, whilst only 40% said no. Taking this information, my group and I decided to incorporate a musical instrument into our own music video which is why we allocated specific parts of the song to the artist performing the song. Many other aspects of the video have been taken from my research; the vox pops also aided in helping to provide inspirations. One of the questions on the vox pops was asking whether the audience participant prefers the location of the countryside or city; more people said the city and therefore we decided to incorporate shots of London in our video. In order to make it more obvious it was the city, we planned out various locations such as London Bridge, Oxford Street and Covent Garden. As this is an indie love story, using London shots would subvert some of the conventions of the genre and therefore appeal to the audience more as the video will be more unique. Overall, the primary research helped to plan out a more successful music video as the majority of my group and I's decisions were shaped around the audience's answers given in the questionnaire. 

We also had to carry about secondary research of gaining inspirations from other artists of the same genre. As my group and I's artist belonged to the indie genre, we focused on artists such as Ed Sheeran, Tom Odell, Nina Nesbitt, Birdy and of course, Gabrielle Aplin herself. From looking at Gabrielle Aplin first, we noticed a trend in her look; she prefers a minimal look, with more casual-style clothing and natural makeup. Therefore, for our own artist, Amy, we wanted to keep the costume and makeup planning as low-key as possible as the audience want the artist to be extraordinary enough that they can aspire to them, yet if the artist wore designer clothing and a lot of makeup, it would not fit the genre, but rather come across as quite mainstream. My group and I also noticed that artists such as Gabrielle Aplin, Birdy and Tom Odell all played musical instruments in their video. The song we picked, "Salvation", featured an instrumental of a piano and as Amy could actually play it, we decided to definitely feature one. In addition, as stated previously, in our primary research of the questionnaires we carried out, more people mentioned that they do like to see the artist playing an instrument and therefore it was beneficial to include this performance aspect in planning the storyboard. This also helps to maintain that extraordinary perception the audience has of the artist, as it is important that they can take something from the music video, otherwise it appears quite boring. Another inspiration we took from our research into the indie genre was the different shot types that many artists used. In Birdy's music video for "Skinny Love" she is shown playing the piano; as we wanted to have Amy playing the piano as well, we looked into this video in depth. We noticed that even though there was not much occurring in the performance aspect, expect the artist playing an instrument, it was still quite interesting to watch as the shots never stayed the same for more than three seconds; the range of extreme close ups, to mid-shots and wide shots from different angles of behind and to the side, kept the performance aspect exceedingly refreshing. Therefore, we ensured to employ the same variety of shots in our own music video. We planned out extreme close up shots such as Amy's foot on the pedals of the piano, or her fingers playing the keys, etc. This way, our music video would be perpetually interesting for the audience.

My group and I started off storyboarding our music video by analyzing the lyrics of our chosen song, Salvation. We did this so that the shots we chose made complete sense and actually matched what Gabrielle Aplin was writing about. However, we evidently did not copy out the literal meaning shot by shot as firstly, many meanings could be taken from the lyrics and secondly, we wanted to make the video as unique as we could. There were some lyrics that we thought had connotations of death, such as "glorious we transcend into a psychedelic silhouette", which matched our narrative, as the male protagonist actually dies at the end of our music video. Analyzing the lyrics meant that it was a lot easier to come up with a coherent and interesting narrative with a lot of ideas of shots so that we do not run out of things to film. We then started writing out each individual shot that is going to be included and in the correct sequence. The reason for doing so is to we know the correct order to put all our shots in when we start editing the filming. To help keep track of the number of shots we would be taken and how long each shot would be, we ensured to include the framing number and the duration of each individual shot; this enabled us to keep track of how many minutes of the song we have taken up. Consequently, we nit-picked over the very necessity of the shots to include as our timing was limited. Within the storyboard we also included images to give a rough idea of what the shot will look like. Drawing images to match the shot type is exceedingly useful as it helps with visualizing the shot and therefore when we get to actually filming the video, we will be able to quickly set up the scene to match the storyboard. During filming we would be referring back to the storyboard frequently and therefore it was vital that we put as much visual information on it as possible to avoid any confusion. Therefore, the actual writing we included in the storyboards has been selected in a particular way; along with the basic information such as the shot type, the editing style, the lighting, the location and iconography, we have also expanded on details by giving information about the actual narrative content and the sound (the lyrics) that will go along with the shot. This is exceedingly beneficial for keeping the narrative and performance parts of the video in time with the music and the lyrics. The artist will be showing performing the song and therefore she must be both singing the song and playing the piano completely in time. The storyboard will aid in doing so as it will show which parts MUST be shown at a specific time according to when a particular line of the song is sung.

The creation of the storyboard was a group effort; we started the process during class and therefore had the opportunity to work together on it. We all put input into our thoughts as to how long we think each shot should as keeping the duration to a specific timing can be difficult when there are a lot of things you want to include. However, as we did not finish the storyboard during class time, Molly decided to stay on and complete it during the next hour after class as she had a free period. She finished writing out all the information and then Claire and I finished off the drawings to accompany the relevant shots. Before we actually started creating the storyboard, we first discussed how to best approach it. First, we referred back to the lyrics that we analyzed as our annotations aided in acknowledging where each shot will be and all the different misc-en-scene components that will be included in each one.

Overall, my group and I followed the storyboard to nearly exactly how we produced it. This is due to the fact that we created the storyboard so well and detailed that it needed minimal changing. However, there were some instances in the storyboard where shots were moved around a little. For example, the London scenes we decided to put it had to be fiddled with a little in order to match the scenes before and after it; in the storyboard, there were some parts where the London scenes did not actually match and we only realized when we started filming and put the shots together. There was also the issue of natural lighting and weather conditions. During planning our storyboard out, we did obviously take into account some factors that may affect our filming. However, we did not anticipate the quality of the filming indoors if it was dark outside. For example, for our performance scenes where Amy is playing the piano, we played to film it in low-key lighting, with just candles providing our lighting. As we filmed these scenes when it was not particularly light outside, the quality of the footage was not brilliant, as the lens gave a grainy looking effect to the visuals. Therefore, we had to rethink this and instead of turning off the lights, and filming when it was dark outside, we still used candles, but just turned on the lights in the room. This is simply as the candles were essential to the music video, however we could simply edit the footage to make it appear darker; it is better to film during lighter conditions as the quality will not deteriorate when you edit it to make it darker. There was also another obstructing factor: the weather conditions affected the day we could film the scene of Amy on a run. As it had rained on the previous day to filming and it was still raining when we got to filming, there was a hazard of Amy running as she could have slipped and hurt herself badly. There was also the risk of the camera getting wet; therefore we had to reschedule the day we filmed this scene as we did not anticipate the weather conditions. However, I do think that our storyboard was ultimately a success as we ensured to use maximum detail to minimalize any issues.