Music video storyboard - Miss Georgiou

Storyboard

The purpose of a storyboard is to illustrate how a media performance is going to look before it has been produced. The order in which the visuals appear often help to tell an audience a story, therefore it is important that the structure and narrative is set out on paper before filming. A storyboard is beneficial due to the fact that it is flexible in the sense that you can make changes to it at any time according to a change of vision regarding how you want something to look, however, a storyboard does give you a direction to work in because it sets out what needs to be done and ensures that all visuals are filmed in order to complete the narrative.

As a group, we carried out several forms of primary and secondary research before beginning to create a storyboard and film for our final music video. We used our vox pops and the results from our questionnaire because they told us what the target audience wanted to see in a music video. We plan to include the most popular aspects from the results into our storyboard to ensure that our music video appeals to our target audience, for example, most of the target audience wanted the music video to be set in the city, therefore we plan to include visuals of famous London landmarks such as Big Ben and the London Eye at various points in the video to show the audience that the characters are in the city. Furthermore, due to the fact that the narrative that we created is based on a love story, we came up with the idea that the use of these landmarks could represent the places that the couple in the video have been together, which could suggest the idea of the two characters going on dates together. The love story narrative is conventional to the indie genre due to the fact that indie artists often write songs that are based on real life experiences about love and relationships because an audience may be able to relate to these experiences which will increase the likelihood of them wanting to listen to the song again. The use of these primary forms of research will help us to include our target audience more in the planning aspects of the process because they are the most important people to consider and their opinions are what will determine the success of our music video.

We also analysed different music videos that had already been created by our chosen artist in order for us to get to know more about her individual style that we can include in our music video to make it more recognisable, for example, Gabrielle Aplin likes to wear casual clothing and natural looking make up which helps her to come across as more relatable because not everybody can afford designer clothing, and it shows her as not being materialistic which most artists are perceived as being. Furthermore, we also analysed music videos created by other indie artists including Birdy and Ed Sheeran in order for us to identify things that are conventional to the indie genre as a whole, for example, the use of performance in an indie music video is conventional due to the fact that it helps an artist to show off their talents, for example, the ability to play musical instruments such as the piano which links into Dyer’s Star theory and the idea that an artist must be extraordinary in order to keep an audience interested and envious of them, because they are seen as having lots of talents and skills that the audience may wish they had. The use of close ups of the artist is also conventional to the indie genre because they allow an artist to show the audience how they are feeling at a specific point in the video which arguably links to the idea that indie artists often write their own music and at that their songs are often based on real life experiences that allow an audience to get to know more about an artist and make an emotional connection with the song, this makes them more likely to want to buy and listen to the song again. The use of these secondary forms of research allowed us to gain ideas for what we could include in our own music video to make it recognisable as part of the indie genre, for example, the use of low key lighting to make the video feel more emotional, and the use of realistic, easily accessible settings and affordable clothing to make the video more relatable for the audience.

We started off by analysing the lyrics to our chosen song in order for us to establish a better understanding of what the lyrics could mean and therefore how we could use visuals to express the meaning of the song to the audience, for example, the lyrics “the darkest fairy tale”; the term ‘fairy tale’ connotes the idea of love and a happy ending, however, the word darkest suggests that the two characters are not going to have a happy ending, this therefore arguably foreshadows the death of the male character at the end of our music video. Furthermore, before creating a storyboard, our group came up with an idea for the narrative of the music video that we could use to inspire the way our storyboard was going to look. We decided that our narrative was going to be based on a love story between a girl and a boy, beginning with how they meet and finishing with the implied funeral of the boy after he gets sent off to war which is conventional to the indie genre due to the fact that indie songs are often based on real life experiences that an audience may be able to relate to, and we feel that this narrative will allow the audience to make an emotional connection with the song. The analysis of the lyrics and then planning a narrative was beneficial to our group because we already knew how we wanted our music video to look before creating the storyboard, and the storyboard itself is something that we can refer to back to when we are filming to make sure we are working in the right direction and to ensure that we are all clear on what needs to be filmed. Furthermore, by taking the time to put our idea onto paper helped to ensure that everybody in the group has the same vision and that we wouldn’t forget how we wanted the music video to look, which therefore allowed us to go off on our own and film specific sections from within the music video. Together as a group we planned the narrative for the storyboard which included where we wanted specific visuals to be seen according to where we felt they would most compliment the lyrics, for example, the lyrics "the darkest fairy tale" will be accompanied by the visuals of the male character being shot, which will be followed by footage of his funeral and the artist scattering his ashes, therefore these lyrics arguably foreshadow his death in the video. Together we wrote down the content of each scene, the specific camera shot we were planning to use, the editing techniques, the lyrics, the characters and the iconography that would be involved according to the narrative, and we then drew the images according to what the other group members had written which ensured that every member of our group had the same vision for how our final music was going to look.

For the majority of the filming process our group managed to follow the storyboard that we had created prior to filming, this was due to the fact that we have previously decided on specific locations that we wanted to film in, therefore we knew exactly where we needed to go when filming and what we wanted to see. However, we did experience some issues with lighting and weather that meant we had to change some aspects of our storyboard, for example, we wanted to use low key lighting during the performance sections where the audience will be able to see the artist playing the piano because we felt that the use of low key lighting would complement the emotions that we wanted her to be perceived as having, therefore, in order to create a low key lighting we closed the blinds in the room that we were filming in, however, when we played the footage back we found that the footage had a grainy looking effect because of how dark the lighting had become, we therefore decided to film the piano sections again but this time using more of a high key lighting due to the fact that we realised it would be easier for us to add a special effect to make the footage look more low key, as opposed making the footage look more high key. Furthermore, we had previously set a date to film the scene during which the artist can be seen running that appears towards the end of the video, however, it was raining on the day and we did not want Amy to feel uncomfortable when filming, therefore we decided to change the date to the next day when the weather was forecasted to remain dry.