WHEN THE SUN HITS
When the Sun Hits is a music video that Maisie and I co-produced in our first year of college. The narrative reflects the lyrics, portraying a relationship where one partner begins to drift away while the other struggles to hold on. The narrator pleads for them to stay, recognising both the depth of their bond and the strength of their love. The chorus uses the “sun” as a symbol of that love, radiant, powerful, and enduring, even as the connection is tested.
WHEN THE SUN HITS
SKILL DEMONSTRATION:
Although this is one of my earlier works at college, I chose to include it in my portfolio because it reflects my personal artistic style and my ability to create emotional resonance through narrative and creative direction. I’ve also added extracts from my idea generation and storyboarding process to illustrate how I developed and planned the narrative to align with both the song and the conventions of the shoegaze genre.
IDEA GENERATION
This stage involved the cultivation of ideas for a potential final product. This was imperative in order to fully consider the practicalities, strengths and weaknesses of my ideas, which ultimately enabled me to converge the best components of each idea into my highest quality design. From this, I would be able to present a strong and coherent idea when delivering my project proposal to my tutors and peers.
THE SONG
"When the Sun Hits" by Slowdive is a song about a relationship between two people where one is starting to become distant and the other is desperately trying to save it. The narrator pleads for the other to stay, recognizing the importance of their relationship and the strength of their connection. The chorus speaks of the power of the relationship, with the "sun" representing their love and its intensity. The song speaks of the deep and powerful love that the narrator has for the other person, and the intensity of that emotion, even when the other is struggling to stay connected.
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PROJECT CONCEPT
The video is going to be based around the lyrics which portray devastating heartbreak and devotion. After the introduction of the song featuring Victorian living room set up band footage, the narrative will begin with a shot taken on a drone with a girl on the beach alone as a tiny dot in the sand down below. She will be standing there holding a photo and burning sparklers before she will set the photo on fire. There will then be a memory montage of her and the boy in the photo before the final shot of this, where they are running through the city together and he lets go of her hand, but when she turns back he is nowhere in sight. There will then be spinning transition where she is disorientated and overwhelmed looking for him, then all of a sudden she is back on the beach alone and she remembers its all over. She looks down to see the ashes of the photo on the floor by her feet. She then walks towards the sea and sits down in the waves in emotional defeat before there is another wide shot taken from the drone, the shot pulling away from her showing her emotional detachment and broken spirit.
Eddie Hamilton Lecture
At a lecture by Eddie Hamilton, the famous editor of Top Gun, I learned the technique used to solidify ideas grasped from ideas generation. He showed us how he created a mock up of the London taxi scene in Top Gun using all kinds of media excerpts that embodied his vision such as youtube clips, images, sketches, comics and AI configured images. He animated these into a sequence he was happy with, trialing timings and shot types alongside the soundtrack, before slotting footage into the timing structure to form a second mock-up using replica footage shot at an alternate location to the final cut. This mock-up scene was almost identical to the final footage used, only missing the actors and final locations, but enabled Eddie to know exact timings for each shot to a perfected and extraneously reviewed extent.
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Learning his methods, I was inspired to use this same mock-up tchnique in the process of producing my music video. I researched on pinterest to identify images that resonated with the ideas Maisie and I had come up with. We then configured a story board from this range of sources from across the internet to form a time-line to these images, forming the narrative of our idea. This mock-up is displayed below:
Studio Scene
The beginning of the song will be completely band footage until the beat of the first chorus drops and the narrative will begin. Throughout the video it will briefly cut back to studio band shots as B-roll footage.
Beach scene
In these scenes we want to make it like she is alone and looking back on her relationship. Mixture of different shot sizes.
Montage Lifestyle Sequence
Fades to white flashes between brief scenes of them together like a film reel showing memories. This will be edited as a memory montage with fast cuts and will include a mixture of low and high quality shots. To do this we will film on different types of cameras such as the Canon R10 and Nikon Coolpix
Chorus
As the sun hits, she'll be waiting
With her cool things and her heaven
Hey hey, lover, you still burn me
You're a song, yeah (Hey hey!)
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There will then be a close up of each person framed from the perspective of looking at each other, then a close up his hand grabbing hers followed by a running montage with blur motion, as used in Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wai. It then returns to a close up of them holding hands tightly before the boy lets go and she turns back to see what happened before realising she is all alone and spins around frantically searching for him, shown by several short hard cuts of spinning footage. This then transitions to her spinning on the beach and remembering its all over.
Spin transition
To visually enhance the her emotions and portray her life spinning out off control we will use a 360 shot of her looking around frantically, similar to the technique used in this video.
Beach Scene
The end of the 360 shot there will be a transition and she will be back on the beach alone. Shots of her walking into the sea and sitting down. Ends with a close up and a sped up video of the camera moving away and her in the same position.
Shoegaze Genre
Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop") is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume.
Target Audience
Researching the target audience for a music video is crucial for tailoring visual elements to audience preferences, ensuring relatability, and maximising engagement. Understanding demographic and psychographic details guides creative decisions, resulting in a video that resonates with the intended viewers, fostering connection and enhancing overall reception.
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To gain insight into the preferences of my target audience, the fan base of Slowdive, I wanted to trial different methods of gathering research in order to widen my reach for the information i was able to obtain. By using a variety of methods I was ensuring I was able to overcome the limitations of individual techniques, and gather a much broader variety of data. Therefore, I chose to use the primary research method of a survey, and the secondary research method of studying online public opinion statistics.
Locations
The main setting of the narrative depicted in our music video will be a beach, where a girl is shown to be completely alone walking contemplatively towards the sea, reminiscing upon her failed relationship wondering where it all went wrong. Taking into consideration factors such as distance, popularity and practicality, we decided the best locations for this scene would be one of the following:
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-Wells beach
-Overstrand beach
​During the music video, there will also be a montage memory reel that will feature moments from throughout the entirety of the span of the characters' relationship. Therefore we will need to use several locations for these shots in order to maintain a sense of realism and logical time scale. Some locations Maisie and I decided would be suitable are listed as follows:
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-Hollywood Bowl Arcade, Riverside, Norwich
-Prince of Wales Rd, Norwich
-Norwich Train Station
-Lady Julian Bridge, Riverside, Norwich
-Rosa's Bedroom
-Five Guys American Diner, Riverside
-Public transort
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Prior to the beginning of the narrative, the video will start with experimental shots of a band playing the song. Throughout the beach narrative that follows this, scenes from this initial timeline will be intercut as B-roll footage. For these shots we came up with the idea of using one of the following locations:
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-City College Norwich television recording studio
-Empty industrial warehouse
-Crowded library interior​​
Characters
The beginning of our music video will consist of band footage shot in a Victorian style living room setup surrounded by a black void that we will set up in the television studios at our college. For these shots we reached out to some of the music diploma students in our building at college who I am friends with, and asked them to form a band to be in our video playing When The Sun Hits. Ideally we wanted a 4 piece band, and this is exactly what we managed to cultivate. Below is a list of the people we cast for each role:
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Billy - drums
Sage- bass guitar
Ivy - backup singer/tambourine
Rafe - electric guitar/lead singer
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For the narrative component of the music video we needed two main characters, a girl and boy aged 16-20, to play the roles in a devastating heartbreak. For this I, Genevieve, had specific people in mind that I wanted to play these roles due to their allusion to the visual styles and personality of our vision. The first, Irene, a friend of mine who lives in London who studies at the BRIT school for creative arts. The second a boy called Will who is a friend of a friend that I have now gotten to know. He has previous acting experience in his other friends' music videos and is also a creative himself, studying fashion communication at our college, City College.
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Irene - girl
Will - boy
Equipment
For the majority of the video, such as the beach scenes and band footage, we will be shooting on a cannon R10. The R10 has a series of advantageous automated modes to support the user. For instance, the table on the right shows its features in comparison to other options available on the market. These factors, in combination with previous successful use, are what lead to our decision of using this camera model. We have easy access to this model of camera since we are able to hire it out from our college, which makes it a more viable option over other cameras.
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For establishing shots of the beach, I came up with the idea of experimenting with drone shots. This idea was inspired by shot types I had come across from watching a multitude of other music videos on youtube. When exploring the likelihood of being able to find access to this equipment, bearing in mind it's very expensive and requires expert training, I found that one of my friends in the second year of my Creative Media Diploma at City College owned a drone for filmmaking and had experience with using it. This meant that it was suddenly a realistic possibility that we may be able to use a drone for certain shots in our music video.
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For the memory reel montage, Maisie and I decided that we wanted to use a range of different camera qualities to portray a more intimate and private feel to our footage, like old childhood home movies found in the attic. To do this we decided we would use a combination of the Canon R10 and my Nikon Coolpix L27.
Moodboards
Major Influences
Wang Kar-Wai / Christopher Doyle
ABOUT
Wong Kar-wai BBS is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films are characterised by nonlinear narratives, atmospheric music, and vivid cinematography involving bold, saturated colours.
Christopher Doyle is an Australian-Hong Kong cinematographer. He has worked on over fifty Chinese-language films, being best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-wai in Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046.​​
INFLUENCE ON MY WORK
What I loved most about the work of Christopher Doyle was the blue-green colour grading used in almost all of his film work in collaboration with director, Wong Kar-Wai. I felt that its use creates a beautifully cold and isolated atmosphere around the characters' dispositions, and this is something that I would like to incorporate in my outcome for this project through use of colour gels on my lighting equipment, as well as colour grading in post-production.
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Shunji Iwai
ABOUT
Shunji Iwai is a Japanese filmmaker, video artist, writer and documentary maker. Iwai has amassed a devoted following because of his ability to transform the loneliest period of one’s life into lyrical poetry, and his films are beloved by those who see themselves in his characters. He can recreate the anxiety, fear and instability of those years like almost no one else can, while crafting his stories with an illusory quality that makes us question how much we truly know about his characters and their world. With a series of signature techniques, Iwai keeps his audience off-kilter and uncomfortable to evoke the dizzying feeling of this epoch in one’s life.​​
INFLUENCE ON MY WORK
Shunji Iwai's work was the main influence determining the way I wanted to use cinematography and framing. I like the way that silhouette of figures in a scene often plays a key part in his shots. I also like the use of colour grading in his work, using a mixture of both blue-green and blue-lilac tones. His works also inspired my ideas for the portrayal of my leading female character. I felt that the way he depicts the teenage girl experience aligned with the moody contemplative feelings I wanted to portray in my characters.​
BEACH NARRATIVE + MONTAGE STORYBOARD
