Group Storyboards - Miss Miller

Group Storyboards

The purpose of a storyboard is to help organise and produce a successful and conventional indie narrative and purpose for our music video. It is imperative to plan our music video before we begin to film as it will help us to create stable and professional shots as we will have a greater understanding and idea on how to guide us to a conventional indie genre music video.

Here is photographic evidence of the planning me and my group have made in the storyboard format. Here we have discussed each frame individually including specific detail on timings, iconography, settings, actors included in the frame, lighting and editing techniques and also the narrative description of that specific frame.

As a group we carried out primary and secondary research which gave us inspiration for our music video. We carried this out in the format of a questionnaire and vox pops which included questions on the indie genre. Some of the questions we used were, "what types of locations would you expect to see in an indie music video?" and "what types of camera shots would you expect to see in an indie music video?". The most popular answer for these questions was a field and close up shots to show the artists emotion. Therefore, we incorporated these into our music video as this gave us an understanding as to what our target audience expected to see out of our music video. We used a field location to shoot our artist singing towards the camera, we felt as though her being alone in the field location would also portray a theme of vulnerability which is also conventional to the indie genre. We also incorporated many close up shots as this showed the artists facial expressions which enabled the audience to gain a deeper understanding of how the artist was feeling and the emotions that she felt when singing certain lyrics. This was also conventional of the indie genre as the artists usually portray themselves in situations that are relatable for the target audience. For example, going through a heartbreak as this is a common situation for the 15-25 year old target audience and they could therefore relate and personally understand how the artist may be feeling and this helps to make the artist become someone that the target audience would idolise. We used a variety of open and closed questions in our questionnaire and overall used a number of 10 questions. We gave our questionnaire to 40 members of the public from a range of target audiences ranging from 15-60+ although we focused mainly on the target audience of 15-25 as this was the main audience we would be targeting with our target audience. Once we received our results we made pie charts to make our results more organised and easy to follow. Once we recieved the highest numbers for our video we took inspiration from this and tried to include these elements in our music video. These included things such as a strong narrative, a relatable star and a isolated setting such as a field.

Most of the inspiration for our music video was taken purely from other music videos from the indie genre and also the results we got from our questionnaire that we gave to 40 members of the public. We took inspiration from similar artists to our chosen artist "Birdy" who is from the indie genre. We looked at artists such as Ellie Goulding and Lana Del Ray as these are two extremely successful indie artists and their music videos contain conventional connotations which my group can taken inspiration from and begin to incorporate some of these ideas in our own music video. We took inspiration from all micro-elements such as cinematography, mise-en-scene and editing. This includes various shots to help our artist connect with the audience, different editing techniques to help the video flow and make it easily understandable and also mise-en-scene to make our video and artist hold a sense of realism which helps for the audience to relate to the artist.
However, we also took inspiration for our music video from the ideas and inspirations of those of our group members. Each week the group would participate in group meetings to discuss and identify elements which we liked and disliked in our music video production. In these meetings the group participants were also able to describe any ideas they had to incorporate in our music video to improve any elements that were unclear or didn't work well in our video. This is where we took the inspiration for one of the key settings within our music video. Jemimah Ali, one of my fellow group members clarified that Camden Town in London would be a very conventional setting to use for our music video. She identified that in Camden there is many unique and exclusive buildings and individuals that look conventional to the indie genre as most indie artist represent themselves as individuals who have their own sense of style and have the freedom to express themselves the way that they want to. Therefore, the whole group agreed that this location would really fit into the theme we was going for and the representation we was portraying for our artist. We decided to use this location for a positive memory scene to show the couple shopping in one of the Camden markets on a date as not only did this portray a sense of realism to the target audience but it was also relatable as Camden is a popular and well known location which the majority of the target audience would have visited before further making the artist seem more ordinary and relatable.
Another inspiration that we received from group meetings and came from a group member was myself  and this was for the use of iconography which included of coloured smoke canisters. The idea was to let the smoke canisters off in the forest to create a unique and exciting atmosphere to also represent the rebellious side of the artist which is another relatable theme for the young target audience of 15-25 year olds. We decided as a group that this would also make our music video seem high budget and professional as you wouldn't usually expect to see big splashes of colour in the forest in a low budget indie video so this is also making our music video exclusive and unforgettable as this would have an impact on the target audience making them remember the music video and artist for being extraordinary. The use of smoke canisters is also used in Rihanna's video "We Found Love". She uses this type of iconography to represent the fun she had with her boyfriend and how they were rebellious and got into trouble with each other which her target audience could relate to. This is because she is from the pop genre which is usually symbolised with alcohol, drugs and rebelling which is conventional to the pop genre fans. However, we also took inspiration from this as indie artists sometimes write material about personal experiences where they have personally turnt to alcohol, drugs and rebelling which is represented in our video through the use of letting off smoke canisters together in the forest and having fun which is also portraying the artists personal life to the target audience which they could also relate to.

Rihanna using smoke canisters in her "We found love" music video

We took inspiration from many other artists and their music videos to overall gain a better understanding of the genre we was looking into to try and make an extremely conventional and successful indie video. Therefore, we looked at a variety of artists such as Lana Del Ray, Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding and Sam Smith. There are all successful indie artists with multiple music videos to analyse and identify key features.
One inspiration that we took from Lana Del Ray's music video "Summertime Sadness" was the use of a time lapse at the beginning of the music video. We took inspiration from this editing technique as we believed that this effect portrayed hidden meanings which were conventional of the indie genre. For example, the time lapse was of clouds which the clips speed had been increased to make it look as though the clouds were floating and moving forwards really quickly which would have indicated to the audience that the days were going on as they travelled through daytime to night-time. We felt as though this would portray the artists journey and show the audience that the artist had an experience to share with the audience through the narrative based music video. Therefore, we used this technique in our own music video by incorporating a time lapse of clouds to represent the journey the artist had been through before we narrated the artists story of her broken relationship. This is also conventional to the indie genre as the artists usually make their music videos narrative based to make themselves more relatable as the audience can understand how the artist must be feeling after the journey and situations they have been through.

Me and my group storyboarded our music video by discussing each frame in order. All the ideas we had mind mapped and discussed before were incorporated into the storyboards. From the beginning shot to the end shot we drew a snippet of what the frame would look like with a brief description underneath which listed : camera shot, location, iconography, lighting, actors, sound , editing and natrative description. Every detail of the shot would he explain making it easier for us to visual exactly how we wanted the shot to look like and also the shot we wanted to follow. We sat down as a group and discussed each frame in our story boarding process and each member of the group took turns to draw and write the description of the frame. As we were storyboarding we would look up specific camera shots and editing techniques from other indie videos that we liked the look of and believed would work well in our own video and natrative , along the process we would take new inspiration to incorporate in the storyboard to ensure we had a lot of detail to go by helping us to visualise and put the video together.

For most of the shots storyboarded for our music video we did follow, however, for different reasons we didn't follow the storyboard exactly to plan. Most of the important shots showing artists emotion and performance was the shots we filmed the same, however on the other hand, shots that we planned to use for transitions didn't work out as when we got to filming we came up with ideas that looked better than what we had originally planned. For example, we planned for our end shot to include a close up of our two love interests making a heart shape out of sparklers. However when it got to filming this didn't work out and the original idea we had for the sparklers to fizzle out didn't come through. Instead we decided to take shots of the girls walking hand in hand and playing with the sparklers to show they loved each other and were at a strong point in their relationship.

Storyboarding our ideas was helpful for filming because it enabled us to follow a guideline of what was conventional and successful in the indie genre. When filming it can generate stress for the group with the pressure of producing good shots with limitations such as weather and lighting so to have a guideline to follow makes it easier and less stressful as it makes the process more organised. This helps for the group to remember more ideas they had when they see the storyboard and remember the shot we have discussed as a group.

Storyboards were beneficial for us to create before filming as it allowed us to gain a better understanding of the effect we wanted to create and also in which way we would create this effect. For example, we notified in each shot which piece of cinematography would be used, what lighting technique and also what iconography would be used. This helped us immensely to understand exactly what we expected to come out of each shot and this helped us to create successful shots as we understood whether or not they would fit into our indie genre from previous research we had done on the five micro-elements.