Animatic Storyboard

Below is our finished animatic storyboard. I found it very useful to look at the shots against the music in real time as this has helped us decide how long each shot should last. It was beneficial as it has allowed us to see whether our ideas and narrative suit the song. I think that this will be a useful tool to use when it comes to filming as it is easy to follow and should, therefore, make filming easier and less time consuming.

Filming Animatic Storyboard

Today we filmed our animatic storyboard. We decided to enlarge each shot so that they could be easily seen on camera and then placed them on individual steps of a staircase. We wanted to film on a staircase as this relates to the idea of spirals and hypnotism, linking to our song 'Hypnotic', it also made it easy to film fluidly from one shot to the next as we held the camera whilst walking up the stairs.

We played our song out loud whilst filming so that we could get the timing correct. As I filmed the shots, the rest of the group directed me when to move as they looked at the original storyboard. The first take was too shaky and didn't focus correctly so I tried harder to hold the camera still on the second take, this turned out well. We still need to edit the footage, so hopefully we will be able to upload the final animatic storyboard soon.


This task was extremely beneficial as it allowed us to see whether our storyboard suited our song and whether our proposed timings worked well. It also showed that filming without a tripod is harder than we thought, we will have to keep this in mind when it comes to filming our final music video should we choose to include handheld shots.

  

Finished Storyboard

We finally finished storyboarding today. We continued our process of listening to our song and drawing shots that we wanted to occur at different points. As our music video contains quite a lot of locations, for example, Camden, Brick Lane, studio shots, a spiral staircase and a maze, we needed a way to tie all of this together, instead of the locations appearing randomly and not contributing to an overall story or idea. Towards the end of the song the pace increases as the song becomes more dramatic, we want to increase the pace of our shots to match this, flashing quickly to all of the previous locations in order to bring the video 'full circle'.

We also decided to change the plot twist of our narrative, instead of revealing the character to be a professional, smartly dressed office worker at the end of the video, we wanted to imply this more subtly. Still following the same idea of her lost, reckless and unhinged personality that is seen throughout the video being juxtaposed with her 'real', calm and composed self, we wanted the final few shots to suddenly slow in pace as the song fades out, with the final shot being the character emerging from the maze looking more composed than her previous crazed self. We want this shot to continue as the song finishes, with the diegetic sounds of birdsong and wildlife fading in. We hope that this will help to contrast her two personalities, as well as the previous gritty, urban locations.

Upon finishing our storyboard and reorganising the Post-it notes into an order that fitted the song, we drew each shot up neatly on the official  A3 storyboard, taking note of timings, camera movements, sound and angles. These specific details will help us get the exact shots that we envision whilst filming, making the filming process easier and faster as we will have clear direction.

                     

                      

Below is our finished storyboard:

Storyboarding

We started storyboarding our music video today, below is a vlog where I explain the process:

Last year, our storyboard wasn't particularly detailed, this made it harder for us to follow and we ended up changing various aspects as it wasn't planned out thoroughly. I think that this year we will need to spend more time storyboarding so that way we have a clear plan of what shots we need when we go out to shoot, this will make filming easier and less time consuming. As we are creating a music video, there will need to be a lot more camera movement to match the energetic atmosphere of the song, this is something that we hadn't thought about or storyboarded last year. Below are some photographs of the group storyboarding: