Writing a script for a music video is an art in itself and helps the band visualize in their head how the story will unfold. It's a very time consuming process, yet very fulfilling. As a filmmaker, I find that this process stimulates my creativity in an entirely different way, yet ties into the visual aspects of the creative process.
Screenwriting is part of the pre-production process, or the work that is done before the day of shooting. Other pre-production processes might include storyboarding, creating lighting diagrams, creating call sheets and more. Much of the pre-production processes for narrative filmmaking is transferrable to music video production. In fact, many music videos include a short film leading up to the music video such as Michael Jackson's Thriller.
There is one big difference with writing a script for a music video in that the timing of the scenes has to be planned down to the very second to coincide with the music. We'll get into that in a minute but first, let's talk about writing a treatment.
The Treatment
A treatment is a short summary of a story so that it is quickly and easily understood by the client or band. As an example, let's use the music video by Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know in the form of a treatment.
We see a naked form of THE MALE SINGER standing front, facing the camera, against a plain white wall.
As he starts singing, stop motion is used to show the wall being painted on in an abstract style - not showing any artist or brushes.
As the music progresses, we see that THE MALE SINGER is being painted on as well, blending in with the art displayed behind him.
After THE MALE SINGER is fully painted, the camera pulls back slowly to reveal THE FEMALE SINGER who is also fully painted, facing the wall, back towards camera, to the right of THE MALE SINGER.
THE FEMALE SINGER turns her head towards THE MALE SINGER as she begins to sing.
THE FEMALE SINGER then moves closer to THE MALE SINGER while singing looking as if she is desperately trying to tell him an important message. Meanwhile THE MALE SINGER is still looking towards the camera oblivious to THE FEMALE SINGER inches apart from him.
THE MALE SINGER then looks at THE FEMALE SINGER who is now facing the wall in her original position - this time she is oblivious to his words.
Stop motion shows the art being removed from THE FEMALE SINGER until she is finally free from artwork on her naked body.
Both are now looking at each other singing the last of the lyrics "Somebody".
Proof of Concept
During review of the treatment, the band or artist might not fully understand or be committed to the artistic direction. Or it might be that the filmmaker is unsure whether the concept can be pulled off in a way that is invisioned. In that case, a proof of concept will be executed on a small scale by the filmmaker to prove that what is invisioned is acheivable during the full scale production. If it goes south, very little is lost and the treatment can easily be changed and pivoted to a new direction.
With Somebody That I Used to Know, a proof of concept might be needed to prove that the stopmotion can be executed in a way that fits the timing of the song. Stopmotion can be very time consuming so performing a proof of concept will also help gauge how much production time is needed during the full-scale production.
Writing the Script
My method of the scriptwriting procecess will likely be different from what other music video filmmakers do. I typically listen to the song over and over again while listing the time stamps for each change in the direction of the song, whether it be the first lyric, start and stops of the verses and choruses, guitar solo, etc. This gives me a birds eye view of what time I have to work with and how the story will fall into place. Only then can I begin to flesh out the script in detail.
For screenwriting music videos, I typically just use a Word document because typical screenwriting apps don't account for the time stamps needed. Another reason is I format lyrics differently than narrative dialog. Traditionally screenwriters for narrative films use special screenwriting software such as Final Draft or Trelby (which is what I like to use because it's free and open source). This software helps the filmmaker write in a standard that has been accepted across the industry so that it becomes natural to understand dialog, scenes, whether the shot will take place during the day and so on. But again, I don't use those apps for music video screenwriting but my format looks similar to traditional screenwriting standards.
So the beginning of Somebody That I Used to Know might look something like this:
Interior Day - Studio
0:00 - 0:18 - Camera moves from THE MALE SINGER's foot and follows up to his face where the camera locks on his face. He is standing against a white wall body facing the camera. At this point he looks down towards the floor.
0:18 - 0:30 - The camera still locked on THE MALE SINGER's face, still looking down
"Now and then I think of when we were together..."0:30 - 0:48 - The camera still locked on THE MALE SINGER's face, he looks at the camera on the word "die"
0:48 - 0:56 - Stopmotion captures pencil lines on a blank wall that end up connecting to each other in a triangle-like pattern
The script follows this level of detail all the way through the entirety of the song. The part that shows "Interior Day - Studio" indicates that that particular scene will be shot indoors (interior), during the day, and taking place in the scene of a studio space. These notes are useful when preparing the shotlist which ultimately determines the shooting schedule. This music video just happens to have only one location and one scene. Typically, scene changes will be noted above that particular time stamp.
The time stamps cover the start and stop of each filming clip. From this, we could easily create storyboards from each of these timestamps. You can see how this script leaves little guessing how the direction of the video will go and will no doubt be extremely helpful to refer to on the day of production.
I like to include lyrics to the bottom of the timestamp to reference the part of the song in my head.
Writing the script often takes at least a day to mentally fit the story we wrote from the treatment. Sometimes more.
Summary
Writing a script is not as simple as it might seem but is a fun and rewarding process nonetheless. Taking the time to add the details will ensure that there are as few as possible surprises during the production.
