Updated Premise - More detailed planning

Today we had another production meeting where we began detailed planning of our final production.  In other words, we constructed a verbal storyboard and in depth, talked through how we would shoot our music video.

 Below is the notes and how we have decided to film our music video  from the discussions we had today:

- Start off with a wide shot of the cork-board filled with photos. There is just dietetic sound and the camera is slightly zooming in/ out.
- The boys hand comes in, not revealing his identity, and unpins a photo from the board. Due to the side on camera angle, the audience do not see what photo it is.
- The boy sits on the bed, looking at the photo. The boy is sitting on the bed in between the window and the camera. The lighting is dark and the windows natural light creates a silhouette of the boy looking at the photo.
-We see shots around the room of the boy sitting on the bed and looking at the photo, throughout this, his identity is revealed.
- At 0;15, when the chord shifts, the boy will stand up, put the photo in his pocket and get up to leave.
- Then at 0:23, as the drums kick in, he slams the door with purpose as he leaves.
- He leaves the house and turns right out of the gate. Walking down the street there are montage shots, that importantly wont break his 180-degree rule (he's always walking right)
- Fade to black

- cuts to a girl in her room, combing her hair etc..
- See's a 'Happy Anniversary' card, that the audience assumes is from the boy. She looks at it before tossing it away.
- At 0:45, she gets up and leaves her house, turning left out of her front door,
- Here, we plan to implement another montage like sequence of the girl walking along the pavement.
- Along her way, we plan to use some special affects to portray her sending a text to the boy.
- She reaches a bus stop and

- We  cut back to the boy walking outside the entrance to a restaurant/ cafe. Then, in a flashback, the audience will see the two holding hands and walking in.
- Another montage of the boy walking where he will receive the text but nevertheless ignore it and carry on walking.
- Eventually, he will come off the urban street and transition into a more natural location. We have several ideas for locations in mind.

-  Cuts to a shot of the girl on bus, looking out of window.
- Girl who is steps off the bus. She see's the boy is ignoring her so she sends another text.
- The girl continues walking until she comes to a  statue/ sculpture (a location for this in mind) and similar to the boys flashback, we cut to a photo of the boy in front of the sculpture.
- She pauses, then continues to walk onto a bridleway.

- Montage shots of the boy walking in the woods, not breaking the 180-degree rule - this ensures he is always viewed by the audience as walking in one direction.
- he receives another text but again ignores it.
- During this montage, we will  experiment with colour correction filters, slow mo and close ups to consolidate the genre of our production.
- As well as shots of the boy, there will be shots of his surroundings and the natural location.

- Then a similar montage of the girl walking along the bridleway
- Again we will feature close ups of the girl as well as generic shots of the location.
- Once again, she maintains a consistent 180' rule so she's always walking in a certain direction.

- After they've both had a montage sequence of them in their individual locations, we are going to implement shot-reverse-shot between them in time with the changes in the lyrics

- Cuts to the boy sitting on a bench along the woodland path he has been walking along
- he pulls the photo out of his photo and stares at it but again the audience don't see what it is of.
- He gets up and puts the photo in his pocket and continues walking.

- Cuts to the girl similarly sitting on a bench along her path.
- A couple holding hands walks passed her and she follows them with her eyes.
- She then gets up and carries on walking

- Boys comes out of the woods and makes his way onto the beach
- Various shots from behind him, giving the sense of travel/ the audience following him.
- We will also use establishing shots of the beach, probably wide angels.
- When he's on the beach, at the climax of the song at 2:38, the boy turns and see's that the girl is also on the beach.
- Used varied shots to emphasis the significance and emotion during of this scene. E.g. wide, shot reverse shot, close ups.
- This is the most important section of the song.
- they stare at each other before hugging each other
- As the chorus/ gospel section repeats, the boy pulls the photo out of his pocket, revealing it for the first time to the audience.
- it is a photo of the girl/ both of them at the beach location - perhaps on a bench/ railing/ shop front/ landmark. Together they turn and look at the location the photo was taken.

- When the gospel section fades out at 3:09, there will be a rather long, fade to black, lasting perhaps until the lyrics come back in or maybe earlier.
- After the fade to black, it fades in and we are back in the boys bedroom. The narrative starts and ends in a very similar way, just like the song and the lyrics.
- He sits on the bed and pulls out a new/ the old photo (not fully confirmed yet).
- he looks at it smiling, shot in a very similar way to how it was shot at the start of the video
- He slowly looks up over the camera and the photo and smiles as if the girl has just walked in.

- Fade to black.

Although this will provide a detailed structure to further plan our project, these narrative points are not final and we still have many crucial decisions to discuss and finalise.

Next Steps: Now we have a general narrative, we have agreed the next important step in planning is to sit down with the track and produce a timeline of when each plot event occurs. This will give us a coherent structure upon which to storyboard our music video. This will also prevent us from shooting our footage and begin editing only to find we haven't got enough footage to last the entire 4:00 song. We will give each narrative section a start and end point coinciding with the track and the changes in the song.

Inital Premise

The basic premise of our music video:

- Two characters, a boy and a girl, are walking in two different natural locations. These are likely to be 1) The woods and 2) A Field/bridleway.
- Throughout the music video, we will cross-cut between the two to establish a narrative  for each character.
- There will also be a third location cut to throughout the video. This will be in a house. Throughout the video we will very slowly pan across a cork board that has a collage of photos of these two characters together. This will give an inclination that the two characters were in a relationship and the separation implies they have potentially broken up. There will be generic photos of the couple as well specific images prompted by the characters visiting certain locations individually. For instance, the girl may walk over a bridge which we will then cut to the cork board where the audience can see a photo of the two holding hands on the same bridge. This is just an example that demonstrates what we aim to achieve by cross cutting to this third location.
- Just to clarify, we have three characters/ locations we will cross-cut between. These are 1) The boy in the woods, 2) the girl walking through a field/ along a footpath and 3) the cork board in the house.
- At the end of the music video, the two characters will make their way to a beach and meet up together. We chose to reunite their pair because the lyrics to the song often include the phrase "a call for your pardon", implying forgiveness and reconciliation.
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Genre - Case Study

The genre of acoustic indie- folk has significantly evolved over the last few decades, with rising stars like Ben Howard,George Ezra and Ed Sheeran successfully exploiting the demand of this modern audience. The music videos for songs, within the genre, such as our chosen track have very typical features that producers use to consolidate the artist’s music and establish them firmly within the genre. From these music videos, as Christine Gledhill argues: “The relative stability of genres enables producers to predict audience expectations.” In other words, the audience have expectations of a music video for certain genre. For example, if it was a heavy metal track, the viewers would anticipate an intense, performance music video. The genre of our chosen track is very emotive and heavily features acoustic instruments. Due to the organic feel of this genre, the audience would expect a video in a natural setting. This is very much the case in famous videos within this genre with artists such as Ben Howard and Benjamin Francis-Leftwich frequently use natural locations in their work. In addition, these kind of tracks usually feature thin textures, often melody and accompaniment, where the singer usually sings just with an acoustic guitar or other unplugged instruments. This emits a raw and personal tone to the track and it is for this reason that producers within this genre usually only feature one, or maybe two, characters in their videos. If it’s just one person singing to camera, the personal feel of the track is reinforced to the audience and like Denis McQuail suggests, “relates to its production.” On top of featuring one or few characters in a natural setting, a convention of music videos within this genre is the use of colour correction/ colour filters. Many directors use these to establish a warmer and calming aesthetic to the music video, matching the sound of music within this genre. Directors use conventions of a genre in their work to “permit the creation and maintenance of a loyal audience which becomes used to seeing programmes within a genre” (Christine Gledhill). However, according to Nicholas Abercrombie, “The boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable.” This proves true for this genre. Artists such as Mumford & Sons, although demonstrating some of the conventional features, have begun to experiment with more performance elements in their music videos. For instance, their video for their 2012 track ‘I Will Wait’ was made entirely from a live performance. Their songs often feature more of a polyphonic texture which often isn’t suited as well to a narrative video, which perhaps explains the videos producers from interchanging the type of videos used. This is just one example of when then conventions of genres can adapt and evolve. Other artists have also began to branch out from the typical features of a music video of this genre. They appear to be breaking the “ideological closure” that a genre provides (John Hartley). For example, Ben Howard and Benjamin Francis-Leftwich have be known to combine narrative and performance elements in their music videos, cross cutting between a natural location and a live performance/ gig. In conclusion, the common conventions of this genre are frequently explored by directors to consolidate an artist’s video firmly within this branch of popular music. Artists however are beginning to challenge the conventions of this genre by including more mainstream elements in their videos. Features such as natural settings, few characters and colour filters are all aspects explored and some that we seek to experiment with during our final production.

Music video inspiration/ moodboard.

Music Video Inspiration/Mood Board by Isaac Winterburn on Scribd

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