Music Video Synopsis

I have created a storyboard for my music video of 'Hide and Seek' and I know exactly what is going to be happening in the music video.

In terms of narrative, the music video will be centered around two characters; one male and one female. They will both be representing two young people in a relationship aged 20/21 who have grown distant due to  individual acts of dishonesty and mistrust.

The representation of the couple will largely be a negative one, yet the audience will be able to empathise with the couple. This representation will be established through the use of black and white and close up shots of the hands moving away from each other on the keyboard of the piano. I would say the representation of the couple is stereotypical and conventional in terms of the representations of young people in the media, e.g. Waterloo Road, Eastenders etc.

The music video does however, show a positive representation of young couples as the black and white images showing negative representation will be juxtaposed with colour images filmed from the viewpoint of the couple. This enhances the relationship between the audience and the music video, whilst at the same time appealing to a wider audience who may not like a black and white music video which has a largely negative message.

The relationship between the two will be displayed metaphorically by a ballet dancer who will be dancing behind the piano. The expressive dance will not only convey the relationship, but it will be choreographed to the song. This reflects Andrew Goodwin's audience theory that the tone and atmosphere of of the images is mirrored through the lyrics or tone of the song.

Furthermore, I plan to have the characters mouthing the words of the song to each other in the music video. This further relates to Andrew Goodwin's audience theory of music videos; whereby he states the lyrics in the song are usually refelected in the music video. This engages the audience further, and in particular my target audience as on my survey many of the responses stated that they like a strong narrative that relates to the lyrics of the song.

In order to create an emotional bond between the audience and the characters, I will give a background story to the events occurring in the present day. This will be achieved through using mobile phone and camcorder footage taken in the past by me and my girlfriend (who will be playing the two characters in the music video) - the amateur nature of the footage not only makes the audience feel more attached to the characters it also makes the music video more personal and more realistic, thus making it a more enjoyable video to watch, whilst being more memorable. My target audience is definitely young people aged 15-21; this is evident from the research carried out on Survey Monkey. I'm targetting this audience by the use of this emotional bond as this age group will be able to relate to this the most.

The music video is going to be of a very symbolic nature. This will be achieved through the use of a ballet dancer (as mentioned above) but also through the use of time-lapse photography which will show a white rose dying over time. This will reflect the death of the relationship, thus personifying the flower as a metaphor. In order to further the symbolism, I will shoot close ups of the dancer's face as she is dancing or comes to a stop in order to show emotion in the dancer's face which will be reflected by the facial expressions and body language

In terms of mise-en-scene, I want the characters dressed in clothes they would wear to a funeral to show the relationship is dead and that they are mourning the loss of love. The music video will be filmed in a dance studio, with bare walls and plain floors. I will use minimal lighting, again to create a mood that reflects the tone of the music.

In terms of equipment, I will be using a Sony a65 DSLT camera with three lenses, a 18-55mm f./3.5, 50mm f./2.8 and a 70-300mm f./4.5-5.3 telephoto lens for the close up shots.