Research & Planning: Final Concept

This Young Boy

Finalised Concept

Main character pushes his bike up the path (no music). Arriving at the top of Red Hill Lane, he looks around. Pan shot of landscape around lane (POV). He climbs on his bike and, kicking off, the music starts. From different points of view, we watch him cycle down the lane. As he nears the railway bridge, the lighting begins to shift and become more surreal. As he rides beneath the railway bridge, the image is blown out with light, and we lose visuals.

He is suddenly in woods, the lighting dark, but with concentrated colour. He looks around. Canted angles, circling tree shots, more POV. He begins to walk the path, still singing. He halts. There is something dark and out of focus behind him. Shift focus: from main character, to body, back to him, to the foreground, where rungs of ladder can be seen. He calmly reaches his hand towards the ladder without looking at it. He turns, the ladder tucked under his arm, and approaches the person. He props the ladder against the tree beside the body and begins to climb. Close up of hands undoing the knot on the branch. See the rope slip away (slow motion). POV of looking down over the branch, see the body splayed on the ground. Low angle shot looking back up at the main character in the tree who begins to climb down. Back to the first high angle shot of him leaving the ladder. Picks up body and props it on its feet. Close up of face, eyes opening suddenly. The revived person follows at a distance as the main character picks up his ladder, sticks it under his arm and walks away.

Switch to storyline 2. Lighting is bright and warm. Establishing shot of rolling countryside taken from inside a car (Note: when shots are taken from inside a car, this is a family holiday video – handheld shots). Also shots of the countryside around. See car in background. Sound of song is lower. Radio turned up and sound returns to full volume. Long shot of location, car goes by, zoom in on a tree.

When zoomed out, we are back in the wooded location. Side shot of main character leading a procession of about 4 dead people. Time begins to move faster, and in a series of faster shots, we see repetitive actions of him placing his ladder against various trees, his hands picking at knots, the bodies dropping. From a low angle, only the newest dropped body is seen, and the feet of others in the background. The main character leans into the shot and helps the new person to their feet. As they rise together, the camera follows until, at normal height, the camera is looking across a crowd of people.

The bridge begins. The main character is alone in the centre of a clearing. The camera circles him. As he looks around, the dead emerge from the trees. This is intercut with a short fragments of the continuing storyline 2, shots of the car turning into an estate, shots of inside the car with the family laughing. Then back to the main storyline. People continue to emerge. This continues in this manner until they, at a distance, surround him and begin to slowly dance around him, circling. The camera spins from the centre of this, flashing past each face.

They stop, and the circle parts. The main character’s eyes fall on something out of shot and, the crowd of the dead split into two equal ranks on each side, they follow him, though the camera angles deny the viewer of what he is seeing, showing him approaching the camera from a high angle. Finally a reverse shot is provided, a close up of dangling feet. There’s a shot back of the main character, whose eyes travel up the body. In splitscreen, he looks at the face – it is a dead version of himself. He steps backwards, out of shot. There are still interrupting shots of storyline two. Slowly, he climbs his ladder. As there’s another close up of his hands on the knot, and it releases slowly.

As it does so, there’s a final sequence of the car, turning a corner, and travelling down a short road. Jumping to inside the car as it approaches the bridge, we see the main character on his bike, going underneath the other side of the bridge. It cuts back to the body falling the final foot to the ground as faint sound of the car brakes screeching is heard. A high angle POV from the branch looks down at the body, and the crowd of dead watch. From ground level, we see the dead version of the main character’s head and shoulders. A match-on-action, we then see the boy in the clothes he wore at the start of the video, lying in a similar position on concrete, the wheel of his bike spinning in the foreground. In the last moments, after lying still as if dead, he opens his eyes.