Media Studies - COMP 3 Screenplay and Storyboard Development

This blogpost, written by me (Maxi), contains the development of the timeline, screenplay, and storyboard of our Music Video, as well as the updates/changes and decisions we made regarding them. Additionally, it is also described how the final music video differs from what we planned in the screenplay and storyboard.

Timeline Development:

Before creating our storyboard and screenplay, in an attempt to have a smoother and more detailed creation process, we as a team worked together to create a short timeline of scenes we wanted to include in the music video, which we did by listing/highlighting the portion of the song (individual lines, verses, choruses, etc), and the specific scenes that will accompany each part of the song. This rough outline of scenes will make it easier to create a specific and well detailed storyboard of events, actions, etc, that our actors will easily be able to follow, as well as making it easier for us as producers to shoot individual scenes and organize shots effectively. 

Here is a picture of said timeline:

Timeline Reflection:

Creating this lyrics sheet together as a team definitely helped in getting us on the same page on the shots, and also helped give us ideas on what the scenes will look like specifically, as well as the planning and what equipment we're going to use. This gives us insight and allows us to make a better and more complete storyboard.

Screenplay Development:

This screenplay was written by me for this music video to help plan out the shot's we'll need to take, and how the actors should act in the video.

     

Screenplay Reflection:

Originally, we thought that we wouldn't need an extensive screenplay for our music video. However, to ease the production process, we decided that we should make one just in case, as it is always better to be more prepared once the production cycle comes around, rather than regretting that we didn't have a complete screenplay in the first place. Other than that, I had previously written screenplays for other projects including my team's Component 1 Film Opening, as well as an additional documentary project. However, I had never yet written a screenplay for a music video. Thus, I built up my existing knowledge on screenplay writing by researching and analysing the screenplays of musicals and movies that heavily employ music throughout, like Damien Chazelle's "La La Land", Lin-manuel Miranda's "Tick Tick... Boom!" and Taylor Swifts "All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)" short film. This aided me in the writing of this screenplay and gave me several ideas on what I should include and how to format it. Additionally, the timeline that we created as a team (seen previously) definitely helped a lot in the writing of this screenplay, as it painted a clear idea of what the scenes should look like.

Storyboard Development:

The storyboard for this music video was drawn by Sharon, while the other members of the team helped and guided her through the process, giving her feedback along the way on what we feel the shots should look like.

 

Storyboard Reflection:

By having this storyboard, we believe that shooting our music video will be much easier as we will have an outline of all the shots we'll need to take, and additionally will also give our actors an idea of how they  should perform and act throughout the video.

Changes to storyboard and screenplay: 

This section of the blog is written after the filming process had concluded, and the editing of the final video had been finished. As expected, there would be many scenes and shots that differ from the screenplay and storyboard slightly. Below I will describe the changes we made by showing what we intended do have in the scene, what we did instead, and why the change occurred, for some major changes that went against the storyboard and screenplay throughout the video.

Major Change 1: The establishing shot of the music video was originally meant to be a tracking shot of the girls from BEHIND, which then switches to a front view showing the villa. Although we did get shots of that during filming, Timo had said they did not look up to par with the quality we wanted them to have, with the lighting of the shots also not looking good. The shot seen above of the girls from the side was the best one we had gotten, and thus we decided to use it instead, since it still conveys the same emotion of the girls waking up excited in their villa.

Major Change 2: The scene in which KIARA's ex arrives at their villa was originally written in the screenplay and storyboard to start off with him parking and getting out of his car. We did get shots of him exiting his car, however in the editing process, it looked better starting the scene off with him walking instantly, as adding more shots would've made the pacing of the scene too fast, as there would've been too many cuts.

Major Change 3: The introduction of our beach scene was originally meant to be the girls arriving in their car. This was changed however due to there not being enough time in the 2nd chorus for the car scene to be included, since we wanted the line "send a pic" to sync up with KIARA and her friends taking a picture together.

Major Change 4: During the whip-pan montage sequence at the bridge of the song, the screenplay states how there  were meant to be whip-pan shots at ALL the locations of the music video. However, the shots that we filmed at the other locations ended up not looking how we wanted them to, as we had position KIARA too close to her friends, and the whip pan affected we wanted was not achieved in the other 2 locations. Thus we decided to only include the whip pan shots at the beach.

Major Change 5: The screenplay and storyboard outline how the ending of the music video would be the girls sitting by the pool of the villa, watching the sunset, after which we'd cut to black. This was intended as sunsets are often used to represent/connote the end, since it is the literal end of the day. Thus to represent the end of the music video, we wanted to follow this convention and use a sunset scene, from where the video originally began. Thus creating a storyline of how the video began in the morning at the villa, and proceeded to also end at the villa too. However, we were not able to capture the sunset scene during day 2 of filming, due to there not being a visible sunset as it was covered by clouds since Bali's weather at the time was very cloudy. We were then further unable to get the sunset at Peninsula Island, since we weren't allowed to film there. Finally, we decided to change the scene entirely to KIARA blowing a kiss towards the camera, and then proceeding to cut to black. Since blowing a kiss also has connotations of "saying goodbye", we used it as a way for KIARA to say goodbye to her audience at the end of the video, which is an idea that I came up with, which the team believed would work well too.

Reflection: 

Although we did not stick to our screenplay and storyboard exactly, my team and I were still able to create a successful music video. The decisions we made to adjust and stray from what we intended was definitely aided by having a proper screenplay and storyboard, since we still had an outline of what our scenes should look like, and make sure details that we change still fit into our overall video. 

Since I was the writer of the screenplay, the overall idea of what the music video would look like was already in my head, which gave me greater abilities when suggesting changes to the music video when we had faced problems that didn't allow us to follow the intended plan. Even though Timo was the one who had the final decision in what shots to include in the scenes, I made sure to give him my opinion on what I believed would look best, which had greatest impact when I had suggested my idea on what we should change the video's ending to.