Music Video Storyboard Artist — Bar-Timed Frames & Animatics

Music video storyboards by Seb Antoniou for directors, labels and production companies. You get 20–25 black and white frames per day, timed to the track with bar counts and beat markers where they affect the cut, plus animatic compilation if the director wants the music aligned to the visuals before the shoot. Quote turnaround within 24 hours on weekdays. Based in London, working with agencies and production companies in the UK and globally.

How music video storyboards differ from TVC boards

The shot list is rarely the spine. The track is. A music video lives or dies on whether the cut hits the beat, which means the boards have to carry timing in bars and beats, not just seconds. If the director's pitched a one-take performance against a drop, the boards have to show where the camera is at bar 16 and where it has to be by bar 20.

In practice, that changes how every frame gets marked up. A TVC board carries a runtime stamp ("0:08", "0:14"). A music video board carries a bar count and a beat position — frame 14 might read "Bar 17, beat 1" because that's the downbeat the director wants the cut to land on. The pre-shoot conversation isn't "how long is this shot," it's "how many bars are we holding before we move."

Two patterns come up on almost every brief:

• The 4-bar instrumental break. If there's an 8-second interlude where the vocal drops out, that usually translates to 4 bars at standard tempo. I'll typically board this as three to five frames — establishing wide on bar 1, two reframes on bars 2 and 3, and a held closer on bar 4 to set up the vocal re-entry. Frame numbers, bar counts, and the held duration all live on the board.
• The drop. Marked explicitly on the board with a beat marker — usually a heavier line or a callout note ("DROP — bar 33, beat 1"). The two frames either side carry the cut: the last frame before the drop holds against the build, the frame on the drop hits hard with a new angle, new lighting, new energy. The board has to show that the cut isn't decorative; it's the song doing the work.

Held frames against a sustained note get treated differently from cuts on a beat. If the artist holds a long vocal line over four bars, the storyboard usually shows that as a single frame with a duration note ("hold 4 bars") rather than four near-identical frames. The animatic later carries the timing; the boards just have to make the intent legible.

I've drawn music video boards in-house at Redknuckles Animation Studio in collaboration with director Markus Lundqvist for Nero's "Into The Night," and across multiple director-led commissions for label and production-company work. On the Nero brief, the boards carried bar counts and beat markers throughout, because the cut design was the song. Every transition between performance, narrative, and stylised animation moments was pinned to a specific bar in the track. The board doubled as the cut-list reference for the animation team.

Music video storyboard examples

The sample boards on this page show what a finished music-video brief looks like as an artifact. Black and white throughout, with bar counts and beat markers visible on the frames where the cut hits the music. Scene and shot numbers along the top. Arrows for camera moves — pans, dollies, whip pans — and short performance notes for where the artist sits in frame and where the eyeline goes.

A few of the boards demonstrate specific moments worth calling out:

• Performance against camera moves. Some frames show the artist held centre while the camera arcs around them — the kind of one-take dolly shot that needs the boards to track where the camera is on every bar. Arrows indicate the move; the bar count tells the DP how long the move has to last.
• Narrative beats cut against the music. Other frames show a story moment — a character entering a room, a hand reaching for an object — with the bar/beat note locking the cut to a vocal line or instrumental hit.
• Held frames. Several boards carry a duration note rather than a cut marker — "hold 4 bars," "ride sustain into chorus" — for sequences where the camera and performance sit still while the song breathes.
• Transitions. Whip pans, jump cuts, lighting flips. Marked on the boards with the bar number where the transition fires, so the cut isn't open to interpretation in the edit.

The boards are pre-pro documents, not pitch art. They're meant to survive the producer's first pass, the director's revisions, the choreographer's questions, and the DP's shot-by-shot prep. The detail on the page is built for that audience.

How a music-video job runs

Music videos scale from a single-day "performance against a green screen" shoot to a two-week multi-location narrative piece.

• Day 0 — quote. Send director's treatment and a link to the track (or rough mix). Quote and start date back within 24 hours on weekdays.
• Day 1 — first pass. 20–25 B&W frames against the track. Bar counts and beat markers on every frame where cut timing matters.
• Days 2–3 — revisions and animatic. Same-day amends on smaller notes. Animatic compilation is an add-on: I take the locked frames into a single MP4 timed to the track, so the director, label and choreographer can see whether the cut works before the shoot day.
• Final delivery. Flat JPEGs, layered PSDs, plus the animatic MP4 if commissioned.

For a 3-minute performance video with a tight concept, 30–50 frames over two days is typical. For a narrative video with multiple set-ups, locations and a story arc, 60–120 frames over a week is closer.

What a music video animatic looks like

The animatic is the bridge between boards and shoot day. Producers get an MP4 file timed to the track — frames cut against the beat where the director's planned a hit, frames held against a sustained note where the camera is sitting still, bar-counted cut markers visible on the timeline.

What's actually in the file:

• Each locked storyboard frame as a still image, sequenced in shot order.
• Frame durations matched to the bar/beat counts on the boards. A frame marked "hold 4 bars" sits on screen for those 4 bars; a frame cut on bar 17 beat 1 lands on that exact downbeat.
• The track itself, synced as the audio bed. The animatic plays the song from start to finish, with the boards advancing in time.
• Bar/beat callouts burned onto the lower edge of the frame where the director wants them visible during review.

Aspect ratio matches the final delivery format — usually 16:9 for traditional music videos, 9:16 if the brief is a vertical-first cut for label social, 1:1 if there's a square version going out alongside. I'll deliver in whichever aspect the producer needs, or all three if the campaign is multi-format.

How the animatic gets used in the pre-shoot review: the director walks the room through the cut, the label A&R sees how the narrative tracks the song, the choreographer counts the bars their performance has to fill, and the DP gets a clear picture of which shots need to land on which beats. By the time the call sheet is locked, everyone has watched the song play through against the boards. The shoot day stops being about discovery and starts being about execution.

Music video storyboard pricing & turnaround

Three rough shapes cover most music-video briefs:

• Single-day performance video. Around 20–30 frames at £450 for the day. Used for tightly scoped concept videos, label deadline pieces, or performance-against-green-screen shoots where the shot count is contained. Delivery inside 48 hours of brief sign-off, animatic on top as a half-day add-on if required.
• Multi-day narrative video. 60–120 frames over a week, priced at the £2,250 week block. Used for director-led narrative pieces with multiple set-ups, location moves, and a story arc that has to track the song. Animatic typically included for label and choreographer review.
• Two-week multi-location piece. Frame count and structure too variable for a day rate — costed as a fixed project fee against the treatment and shot list. Used for festival-tour pieces, multi-act narrative videos, and anything with significant pre-vis demand alongside the boards. Quote returned within 24 hours of seeing the treatment.

Colour frames run as an add-on at 15–25 colour frames per day for moments where the director wants palette and lighting locked before the shoot. Full breakdown of the music video storyboard rates sits on the rates page.

Briefing a music video storyboard

What to send: the director's treatment (even a rough one), a link to the track or a working mix, the shot list if one exists, and references for camera and performance. The track is the only non-negotiable — boards can't be timed without it. Treatments help, but I've worked from a phone call and a Dropbox link more than once.

What the brief should call out up front: the deadline (label deadlines are real and they're sharp), whether the animatic is needed, and the aspect ratios. If the campaign is going out in 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1, knowing that on Day 0 affects how I frame each shot. Single-format briefs are simpler; multi-format ones need to be planned for from the first pass.

How fast a label deadline can be hit: a single-day performance video can move from brief to locked boards in 48 hours on weekdays if the track and treatment land together. Multi-day narrative briefs need three to five working days for a confident first pass plus revisions. Two-week pieces need a real schedule — usually one week of board work against the treatment, then a second week for animatic and amends. If the deadline is tighter than that, send the brief anyway and I'll tell you what's achievable rather than guess. For directors, producers and labels who want to see the broader service shape first, the London storyboard artist overview covers ads, film, animation and music videos in one place.

What's on every frame

• Scene + shot number against the director's treatment.
• Bar count and beat marker where the cut is on the music.
• Camera direction (pans, dollies, crane moves, whip pans, racks) with arrows.
• Performance notes — where the artist is in frame, where the eyeline goes.
• Transitions where they're part of the music-driven cut.

Got a music video to board?

Send a treatment and the track — quote within 24 hours on weekdays. Start a project.