LIONS
Visual Planning (2)
Summary
Think Severance meets Twilight with Fight Club themes. We contrast a smoked-out forest with a stark, infinite "Backrooms" style office space. The band performs in both, and Johnny (an actor) plays an insomniac worker (very Fight Club like) trapped in this endless corporate work loop—infinite coffee, report filing, & repetition with cut shots of him wandering lost through the woods only to stumble upon himself working at a desk in the middle of the trees, like a day dream.
These environments give us a lot to work with; we could have me + the band performing in different ways, and use A.I. tools to add elements, like a pack of LIONS chasing Johnny through the woods & the corporate offices during the guitar solo. We could have an A.I. generated SWAT Team looking for Johnny in the office space & the forest, a gothic female office worker or many other A.I. generated office workers, etc.
At the end of the video, we can have a telemarketer scene with live audio of Johnny calling prospects, repeating the same script over & over again. As a scene setter, it could be that Johnny’s working really late, alone, at the office, and the gothic women in black is an Athena like spiritual/imaginary figure that’s in the office with him.
1. Visual Aesthetics & Color Palette
The Woods (Forest Performance):
Aesthetic: Atmospheric, cold, moody, kinetic. Think cool-toned greenery, tall towering pines, damp moss, and thick ground fog/smoke.
Color Palette: Deep emerald greens, slate grays, cold blues, desaturated earthy browns, stark white mist.
Lighting: Diffused moody daylight, sunbeams breaking through thick fog/canopy, or stylized cool/cyan backlight through the trees for a surreal twilight feel.
The Office (The Infinite Workplace):
Aesthetic: Sterile, monotonous, liminal, slightly claustrophobic. Fluorescent-lit cubicles, beige/gray acoustic tile ceilings, outdated technology (beige monitors, old fax machines, water coolers).
Color Palette: Fluorescent greens/yellows, dull off-whites, industrial grays, cool fluorescent blues.
Lighting: Harsh overhead fluorescent tubes, flickering panel lights, the glow of computer screens casting a cold pale light on Johnny’s face.
2. Conceptual Themes & Motifs
The Loop / Infinite Space:
Both environments should feel endless. The woods go on forever; the office cubicles stretch infinitely into darkness/fog ("Backrooms" aesthetic).
Bleeding Environments (The Convergence):
Desk in the Woods: A single office setup (desk, computer, fluorescent light overhead) standing in the middle of dense, smoking forest trees.
Nature in the Office: Spores, fog, or pine needles appearing subtly on office carpet or around cubicles as the song progresses.
Insomnia / Disassociation:
Johnny’s character embodies the restless, unblinking fatigue from Fight Club. Quick cuts of drinking black coffee, twitching hands, fax machine pages spewing endless blank/scrambled paper, dialing phone numbers into dead receivers.
3. Song Structure & Visual Arc
Intro / Verse 1: Establishing the Isolation
Office Setup: Cold opening on Johnny sitting in an impossibly vast, empty cubicle farm. Harsh fluorescent hum. He’s drinking coffee, staring blankly at a glowing screen, or endlessly dialing telemarketer phones.
The Glitch: Quick micro-flashes of fog/smoke rolling across his desk or between cubicles.
Band Intro (Woods): Introduce Connor & Aaron writing/working in the dark, smoked-out woods. First glimpse of the full band performance through thick atmospheric trees.
Chorus 1: Energy Breakout
High-Energy Woods Performance: Full band performing in the smoked-out forest. Dynamic camera movement—fast tracking shots through the trees, low-angle band shots with fog curling around instruments.
Cut to Office: Band performing inside the sterile office space. Amplifiers stacked near water coolers, drums set up in a cubicle intersection, harsh fluorescent lights flickering to the rhythm.
Verse 2: Disassociation & The Hunt
Johnny’s Degradation: Contrast Johnny alone in the empty office vs. a chaotic, packed office full of lifeless, identical corporate workers (surreal/A.I. generated extras).
The Forest Run: Johnny running frantically through the misty, twilight woods, disoriented and lost.
The Discovery: He stumbles upon a clearing, only to find himself sitting at a lone office desk under a flickering streetlight/fluorescent fixture in the middle of the trees.
Guitar Solo: The Climax (SWAT / Monster Raid)
The Raid: Red/blue flashers cut through the monochrome office. Heavy boots storming down infinite corridors. SWAT team / shadowy figures burst through cubicle walls.
Chaos: Stylized gunfire/muzzle flashes strobing against the beat. Papers flying, monitors shattering, smoke filling the office matching the heavy smoke in the woods.
Intercutting: High-tempo intercutting between the chaos in the office and the band going wild in the smoked-out forest performance.
Outro: Resolution / The Loop
The Aftermath: The smoke clears in both worlds.
Final Shot: Johnny sitting quietly back at his desk, taking a slow sip of coffee. Camera slowly pulls back through endless rows of empty cubicles (or endless rows of trees) into pitch blackness.
4. Next Steps for Production
Location Scouting: Find an abandoned or rentable vacant office floor with low ceilings and cubicles, as well as a dense pine/evergreen woods permit for fog/smoke machines.
Practical Effects: Hazers/smoke machines with fluid safe for dense woods, red gels/strobes for SWAT raid sequences, practical coffee props.
VFX/AI Planning: Map out specific shots where AI/VFX will be used (e.g., infinite cubicle skybox, crowd cloning in the office, digital muzzle flashes/sparks during the guitar solo raid).