Storyline & Symbolism

My music video follows Sara through a series of everyday moments that reflect her emotional journey towards self-acceptance. The narrative is mostly linear but remains open-ended, allowing the audience to interpret her feelings rather than being told directly.

The video begins with a shadow shot, symbolising Sara’s inner self and uncertainty. This is followed by her sitting alone in a café, looking at her phone. This represents the starting point of the narrative, where she feels disconnected and unsure of herself, similar to Todorov’s idea of an initial equilibrium.

As the song continues, Sara moves through different locations such as the subway, the streets, and the park. These spaces represent transition and movement, showing that she is emotionally changing even if she doesn’t fully understand it yet. Shots of people in the subway are reversed, while Sara moves forward, suggesting that she is beginning to separate herself from the crowd and focus on her own path.

The mirror shots appear at key moments throughout the video, showing her awareness of herself. At first, the mirror reflects confusion and distance, but during the bridge, the mirror returns reversed and tinted burgundy, symbolising her metamorphosis and emotional shift. This moment represents the narrative disruption, where she becomes more aware of who she is and what she wants.

The bridge is the most intense part of the video. Sara sits on a bench, looking conflicted, before swinging around a lamp post. This movement shows her releasing tension and starting to change. The editing becomes more chaotic with jump cuts and flashes, which reflects her inner struggle and confusion.

Towards the end, Sara walks more confidently through the park and lip-syncs the chorus. In the final scenes, she runs, stops at a crossroads, and eventually eats at KFC. These moments show that she has reached a new sense of balance and she is more comfortable with herself, even if not everything is perfect. This connects to Todorov’s equilibrium theory, which says stories often start with a stable situation (equilibrium), go through a disruption or conflict, and end with a new equilibrium. Sara’s journey follows this pattern: she begins unsure, faces emotional tension, and ends in a state of personal acceptance.

USE OF RECURING MOTIFS

Throughout my music video, I reused the mirror shot and shadow as recurring visuals to show Sara’s emotional journey. I wanted these shots to feel familiar to the audience, but also change in meaning as the video progressed. I created a vignette effect on the first, original mirror shot to draw the audience’s attention directly to Sara’s face. By darkening the edges of the frame, the focus stays in the centre, which makes the moment feel more intimate and personal. It also helps isolate her from her surroundings, showing that she is stuck in her own thoughts while looking at herself.

At the start, the mirror shot shows Sara looking at herself in a distant and unsure way. The mirror represents her being aware of herself but not fully understanding or accepting who she is yet. During the bridge, I brought the mirror shot back, but I reversed it and added a burgundy filter. This was done to symbolise her metamorphosis and to show that something has changed internally. By altering a shot the audience had already seen, I wanted to surprise them and make the transformation clearer without directly explaining it.

The shadow shot also returns during the bridge. For the shadow shot, I lowered the saturation and darkened the overall image so the shadow would stand out more clearly. This makes the shadow feel stronger and more noticeable, which supports its meaning as Sara’s inner self. The shadow shot appears twice  n the music video, once in the first seconds and then again in the bridge. When it came in the bridge, I edited it off-beat, instead of matching it to the music. I made this choice to show that self-growth isn’t neat or perfectly timed, and to make the moment feel more reflective and personal. The shadow now represents Sara’s inner self becoming more present rather than hidden.

When Sara is swinging around the pole, I briefly brought the burgundy colour back on the beat, only for a split second when the music becomes louder. This was to give the moment more impact and show that her transformation is happening fully at this point.

By repeating the mirror and shadow shots but changing how they look and feel, I was able to show Sara’s growth visually. This allows the audience to understand her emotional change through imagery rather than dialogue, which fits well with the alternative/indie style of the music video.