Music video storyboards - UPDATED

We created story boards in order to give us a clear structure and guidelines of our music video and what shots we will see when. By doing this it allowed us to plan and organise our filming schedule, as we could ensure that all of the shots needed in a certain location are taken. Also it helps us to ensure everything needed is included in the video. We can also plan ahead to make sure we bring all props and actors we need for the shots, therefore helping with the general production of the video.

Prior to designing our storyboards we carried out primary and secondary research in the form of a questionnaire and looking at other indie artists music videos. The primary research of the questionnaire asked our audience the conventions and what they expected to see in our indie music video. We used this research to aid our storyboard creation because it showed us the specific elements that we have to include in order to attract our target audience. This included things like, including musical instruments and having a narrative based music video with some elements of performance. Once our survey was completed we reviewed our results and included the most popular answers in our music video to appeal to the audience. In particular from our storyboards we noticed a 65% majority of the people asked said they would expect an artist to wear quite casual clothing in the video. This could be because by the artist wearing casual clothing it makes them more relatable to the audience and this shows that the people I asked generally relate to the indie music videos they watch and one of the ways  they do this is through the casual clothing the artist wears. This highlights to me the importance of choosing the correct clothing for my female artist so that the audience can relate to them. Also another reason this could be the most popular answer is because again like I said in my earlier point most fans of indie are aware that the music videos are quite low budget. Therefore by the artist wearing casual clothing is represents the video is more about the music then showing off money and wealth through over the top clothing. Therefore, in the video we gained inspiration from this and our artist wore everyday clothing. One of the outfits our artist is wearing a turtle neck, ripped jeans, a parker jacket, high top black convers and this will be styled with chokers to accessories. Another inspiration we gained from our primary questionnaire research was the type of camera shots that we are going to use within our music video, 62% of the people asked said that they mostly expected to see close up in an indie music video, which encouraged me to think about the type of close ups that I can include in the video. From this we gained inspiration to include lots of close ups of our artist singing in the field so that the audience can relate to our audience and feel as if the video Is more personal. Also it helps to highlight the artist emotion when singing certain lyrics therefore the audience will be able to relate their own emotions.
 Our secondary research of looking at similar indie artists was helpful, because these artists are already established and successful, therefore their videos will show us how they attract their audience. Also how they allow their audience to understand the concept of their video and get to know them on a more personal level. In this research I saw that one major way that indie artists done this was close up and playing an instrument. From this we was able to make sure we included all of these features that we recognised in other indie music artists in our own video. Specifically, in Lana Del Rays' Summertime Sadness, a time laps was used, this editing technique inspired Jemimah and she shared this with the group. We all really liked the idea of a time laps as it portrayed time passing by, which could easily link to our video as it is all about our artists past to present life experiences. Therefore we all gained inspiration from this an decided to incorporate this within our own video. At the start there will be a time laps of the clouds, this implies that the video is based on experiences that have happened over time. 


We took a majority of our inspirations from other indie music artists but also from some pop artists. One artists that my group and I took inspiration from was Ed Sheeran and his song 'Thinking out loud'. At the beginning of this video there is a silhouette of a dancer, I was inspired by this as I felt it helped to really focus the audiences attention and the dancer helped to portray the emotions that the lyrics represented. This helped us when planning our video and storyboards as my group and I recognised that we wanted to included performance elements, like in Ed's video, in our own video. It allowed us to see exactly what part of the video we wanted to plan a dance routine for, as on the storyboards we put the seconds for when the frame will occur in the song. Another successful indie artist that we looked at was Lana Del Ray, we looked at the conventions that her music videos include, so that we could get ideas to include in our own video. Furthermore, we looked at all of the various micro elements that are included, such as mes-en-scene (hair and make up, facial expressions, body language, lighting and colour and costumes, these combined help to give a sense of realism to the video), cinematography (the different shots that they included in order to maintain audience interest and engage them) and editing (how they connected their different shots in order to make the video flow).


My group and I sat down together to create our storyboards. Firstly, we discussed our general ideas for what we wanted to include and the various elements we want in it. We then started to produce our storyboards a frame at a time. We looked at the lyrics and tempo of the music to decide what frame we wanted to include. By doing it this way we could ensure that we included all of our inspirations and ideas that we had previously discussed and planned. We done these storyboards from the very first to the very end shot. For each individual one we included a basic picture of what we wanted the frame to look like, also the camera shot, location of the shot, iconography needed, lighting, actors, sound and editing we are going to use. At the bottom there was also a very brief description of the narrative.  We planned these together as a group so that we could all agree on each shot and there would be no arguments when it comes to filming. By doing this is helped us to visualise the shot when it comes to filming them. While creating these storyboards we shared out the responsibility, Rishika done most of the drawings because she it the best at art, therefore could provide a better visual representation of the shot. Jemimah had the song playing, allowing us to listen to the music and lyric, also she helped in planning what as going to be in each shot. Bettie and myself was looking back at our inspirations and helping to decided each frame.


By creating story boards for our ideas it helped us when filming because it gave us clear visual guidance of what we wanted our shots to look like. It also helped us to plan filming because we were aware of who needed to be there and what we needed to bring with us. Furthermore, It made it easier to create a filming schedule as we were able to group together all of the shots that were taken in the same location and film them on the same day. Each shot has a detailed column with a visual of the shot, the duration, shot type, location, iconography, lighting, actors, sound, editing and narrative description. Therefore, as well as having a visual image of what we want the shot to look like. When it comes to editing together our footage we will know what is meant to go where and how it is going to link with our next shot. Although will mainly followed our storyboards, we did make some alterations along the way to develop and improve our video. For example, shot 12 and other shots taking place in the tent is no longer in our video. Instead of having our artist sitting in a tent, we changed this to a mid shot of our artist and her partner running around and having fun in a field together. Another frame that we have altered was frame 4, instead of a high angled shot of the artist we decided to do a panning shot of the artist sitting in the chair and getting her photo box.