Shotlist

This is the combined shotlist for the Branches music video shoot. Day One covered the banquet sequence, the forest entrance where Shel Bee meets the boy, the mirror tree confrontation, the piano scenes inside the smoke, the buried mirror, and the running pickups through the forest. Day Two was the pickup day, capturing additional running shots from a moving car, an insert of the violin and the boy, a dolly-out from the abandoned violin resting against a tree, and completion of the green-grass kiss sequence.

What this captures is a heavily symbolic visual plan built around lensing and frame rate as emotional cues. The 75mm at 96fps inserts are the entranced beats, the moments where time slows because Shel Bee is being pulled toward something she can't name. The 40mm dolly shots are the wider mythological frames. The match cuts between the forest entrance and the green grass scene are deliberate. We wanted the audience to feel the kiss collapse the geography around them.

Pay attention to the mirror tree breakdown. Scene 1 is the funhouse mirror with the boy whispering in her ear. Scene 2 is the punch, the dolly-in moment of change, and the glitter explosion. That's the structural pivot of the entire video. Everything before it is her getting lost. Everything after it is her getting out.

The dolly-out from the violin alone on Day Two doesn't appear in the script. It came from looking at Day One footage and realizing we needed an image of the violin without the boy. That shot suggests the music itself is the trap, not the man playing it.

This was Shel Bee's first time on camera and she carried it.