Script

This is the script I wrote for Shel Bee's debut single "Branches," a five-page music video built around a young woman who answers the siren song of a violin-playing boy at the edge of the forest, follows him in, loses herself, and finds her way back out.

What this captures is a fable. The opening tableau is biblical, a Last Supper of girls in white dresses and pearls feasting under a chandelier hung from a tree. Shel Bee leaves the table when she hears the violin, and the dress turns red once she's with the boy. The piano in the orange smoke is her interior life. The funhouse mirror is what his words do to her. The red smoke that fills the clearing is the moment she nearly drowns in him. The real mirror she finds buried in the ground is the moment she sees herself for what she actually is, which is beautiful, and she kicks the funhouse version and runs back to the field.

Pay attention to the ending. A new girl in a white dress walks toward the boy as Shel Bee steps into the light. He doesn't see her go. The new girl doesn't see Shel Bee at all. The cycle continues. The song isn't about defeating him. It's about getting out.

This was Shel Bee's first time on camera. Everything I wrote for her was designed to be performable by someone who had never acted before, which meant relying on physicality, environment, and music rather than dialogue scenes. The lyrics are the script. The forest does the rest.