By

Andy Hines

copyright

COMING HOME 2018 KEITH URBAN ft. JULIA MICHAELS

The record is awesome, it’s contemporary while playing with the best parts of rock and roll we all love from different periods in music history. I want this to feel brand new to our audience while still referencing some fun “easter egg” moments fans will recognize and love from past videos of Keith's.

If there is a narrative, I see it as nuanced, stylized and not the focus of the video. The lyrics speak to a sense of lose and missing the one(s) you love, and coming home. Taking those ideas as motifs and a theme, I want to do something unexpected with Keith and Julia. This should be dramatic with the lighting and take chances. I love the idea of cutting to Keith in a high angle while his wife is kissing on his face as he sings. It feels like a memory to our narrative - given without context or explanation before cutting away to the another scene. Structurally, there is similarity with Kendrick Lamar’s Humble video in that we have different scenes strung together that create a feeling and strong themes, without being directly linked with a narrative.

We can be artful with this while having a progressive, pop style. We never give Keith the opportunity to get comfortable in any of our locations or settings, creating the sense of searching or being displaced and not knowing what or where home is. We get to explore this visually in a special way, impossible shots, magical realism - all while also having a great performance with him and Julia. I suggest the Human League video directed by Steve Barron (1981) as a lighting reference, but please keep in mind that just because I want to play with contrast, light and shadow - this does not mean that this video is “dark” or lacking light. There are bright beautiful moments in this that are juxtaposed to some of our night time or city scenes and interiors. This video also captures how you can use a narrative as motif, and intercut between dramatic scenes that are tied together by their lighting, not a story. There should be inherent mystery in the visual style, a close up performance shot of Keith or Julia with no context of location. This approach, of making something high concept visual style creates a progressive pop video, we’re breaking new ground.

I want this video to have a more cinematic, film feel to each scene. I’m not telling any story from the lyrics literally, I’m just borrowing from the lyrics for the over all atmosphere of the visual experience. I enjoyed talking to Keith about his ideas of what home is or what it means to be home. There’s an opportunity here to make something that feels really big picture, almost as though we travelled different places to explore that meaning of home in our story. I want to play with magical realism and ways to create an enhanced visual experience with Keith and Julia.

We, the audience, shouldn’t know what is reality or what is not as we move from scene to scene. The below images serve as scene references of what I’d like to shoot with Keith and Julia. They share screen time that we explore during the performance and we get to play with a few different nods to Keith’s past in that we see him walk past a row of wheat paste posters of a past album release that Keith’s fans can see and react to these kind of ‘easter eggs’ throughout the video.

We open on the keys of a piano as a hand enters frame to play the opening notes of the song. The camera rotates around the hands as they start to play, we land upside down on the keys as they leave frame. Cut to a bedroom as we reveal Keith sitting up in a bed, middle of the night. Getting out of bed, he walks to the window, a neon store sign hanging off the building lights his silhouette in the room. We land on his profile as he starts his first verse [00:21]. Opening the window all the way, he climbs out as we roll the camera MATCH CUT to him crawling out the window on the line “where no one really cares if I’m alive” [00:36]. He now climbs out a section of the apartment on the ground in the middle of nowhere – NATURE.

A section of the view drops to the ground, revealing a metal door ala The Truman Show [0:49]. Approaching the door, he walks through into a loft apartment, big and empty. Moving in boxes scattered around the place. A mattress on the floor, city out the window. A close up shot of Keith laying awake in bed pulls back to reveal the corner of the apartment as a set in the middle of a city street. Keith slips his shoes on as a yellow cab pulls up [01:09], he hops in (we have a nod to Keith’s past video with him performing in a cab.) We see his past album cover as a sticker on the glass divider. We don’t cut away from the shot as we see Keith singing looking out the taxi window as we drive through the city on the line “I’m longing for the real thing” [01:30] in the taxi as the background changes and the car pulls over. Opening the door, we reveal Keith getting out of a different taxi now in what looks like Tokyo. Walking through a market crowd, Keith follows a women he can’t quite catch up with, always slightly ahead of him until he loses her. this moment plays over the chorus at [02:00]

A promoter leads Keith in a door straight into a speak easy. At the front of the room Keith sees himself and Julia at the mic singing next to him. We see Keith singing his “coming home” line [02:12] Not sure what to make of seeing himself, he takes the only empty seat in the house. Keith looks around noticing the whole room singing along perfectly to every lyric. We’re with Julia as she starts her part at [02:30]. Picking up a menu from the table beside him, he looks down and sees the lyrics of the song printed as cocktails, “it’s only one call away but it’s not the same”. As he puts the menu down again we reveal the same audience behind Keith, in a different location, Keith looks around with a jolt as he realizes he’s somewhere different than the moment before. He’s standing at a pay phone holding the receiver in his hand, he hangs it up and starts walking towards himself and Julia where they are performing at the front of the room [02:42].

He passes by looking at himself and Julia singing, we focus on Keith’s face as he sings the chorus at [02:50] as he walks past himself out a backdoor into a small town parking lot. We go from CITY speak easy to a pick up truck in a cloud of smoke from a brake burn [03:00]. As Keith walks through the smoke from the truck tires, he comes out the other side of a cloud of steam from a manhole cover in a big city. He pops the collar up on the coat he’s wearing as we see him walk away down the street [03:40]. The music ends as we bring in the sound of the big city street as Keith walks away. As the camera rises up into the air to the second floor window, we see Keith standing in the window looking down matching the opening window scene. Except this time, we see his wife come up behind him, take his hand and lead him back to bed.

VISUAL STYLE

COLOR PALETTE

This should have a commercial appeal and be slick to look at. It shouldn’t have too much grit to the image, and colors should be allowed to be present but slightly desaturated. I like the idea of allowing the lights and environment of the hotel and city it’s in, the color of the sports car - all AS interesting elements of color against an otherwise concrete and metal city background. THANK YOU