"Someone Wakes" - Storyboard Panel Descriptions

Companion to: `storyboard-contact-sheet.png` and the 18 panels in this folder. Companion to: `../music-video-storyboard.md` (the shot list these panels render). Song: 183.5 s (3:03.5). Timings are from the actual render. Status: first pass. Nothing locked. Panels are cheap to redraw (local, free, ~10 s each).

Each entry gives the panel, the section + time, the lyric at that moment, what is in frame, the camera, and the beat (what the shot is doing, not just what is in it).

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01 · `01_intro_room.png`

**Section / time:** INTRO · 0:00-0:06
**Lyric:** - (instrumental)
**In frame:** Wide. The room, empty. Warm desk lamp lit on the left, cold window on the right, the door closed at the back. On the table: papers, a mug, traces we did not see arrive.
**Camera:** Slow push in.
**Beat:** *We arrive mid-chain.* The room is already carrying everyone before - but no one is here yet. The cold window and warm lamp set the two temperatures the whole film moves between.

02 · `02_intro_findsA.png`

**Section / time:** INTRO · 0:06-0:12
**Lyric:** - (instrumental)
**In frame:** Wide. The camera finds **A** - already seated at the desk, already writing, seen from behind and to the side. Calm, absorbed.
**Camera:** Push settles on her.
**Beat:** *We never watch a Dakota arrive.* A is simply already here, already working. This is the rule the whole film obeys.

03 · `03_v1_map.png`

**Section / time:** VERSE 1 · 0:12-0:15
**Lyric:** *"I left the map on the table"*
**In frame:** Medium. A unfolds a large paper map and lays it flat. Two folders (the files) set beside it. A mug within reach.
**Camera:** Hold, medium.
**Beat:** A prepares. The map and files are the things she leaves for the next - the handover made physical.

04 · `04_v1_compass.png`

**Section / time:** PRE-CHORUS 1 · 0:26-0:30
**Lyric:** *"leave what's true"*
**In frame:** Close. Two hands set a small brass compass down on the table, face turned up - and its face has **no north marked**.
**Camera:** Close, on the hands.
**Beat:** *The inheritance with the direction removed.* The compass is passed on; the certainty is not. The suspension in the music lives in this still, unmarked face.

05 · `05_pc1_stops.png`

**Section / time:** PRE-CHORUS 1 · 0:30-0:33
**Lyric:** *"leave what's true"* (the suspension)
**In frame:** Medium. A has lifted her pen mid-line, head slightly bowed. One written line on the page. Holding, unfinished.
**Camera:** Hold.
**Beat:** *The held, unfinished gesture.* She writes one true line and stops - the unresolved appoggiatura on screen.

06 · `06_c1_looks.png`

**Section / time:** CHORUS 1 · 0:33
**Lyric:** *"someone wakes in my name"*
**In frame:** Close-medium. A **stops still, turns to the camera, looks straight into the lens**, and holds. Desk and lamp behind her.
**Camera:** Eye-line to lens, hold.
**Beat:** **The money sync.** The hook lands on *wakes* - and that is exactly where the departing Dakota's gaze hits us. The camera is "someone"; this look is aimed at the one witness. Every relay repeats this.

07 · `07_c1_gone.png`

**Section / time:** CHORUS 1 · 0:40
**Lyric:** *"someone wakes in my name"*
**In frame:** Wide. The room, now empty. The chair pushed back, the lamp still lit, the papers left where they were. No people at all.
**Camera:** Hold, wide.
**Beat:** *The disappearance that is not a dissolve.* She is simply no longer held by the frame. The room keeps everything; she takes nothing.

08 · `08_c1_findsB.png`

**Section / time:** CHORUS 1 · 0:45
**Lyric:** *"she's got my hands, she's got my room"*
**In frame:** Close. A **different-dressed** woman's hands at the worktable, resting beside the brass compass and a loose page of handwritten rules. Hands and forearms only - no face yet.
**Camera:** The move finds B.
**Beat:** *The line is the cut.* The camera does not cut from A to B - it travels and arrives. Same hands, same room, different life. We inherit before we see her.

09 · `09_v2_stairs.png`

**Section / time:** VERSE 2 · 1:09-1:13
**Lyric:** *"three hundred steps straight through"*
**In frame:** Medium-wide. **B** climbs the narrow wooden staircase, hand on the rail, mid-step, determined.
**Camera:** Follows the climb.
**Beat:** B works the room *differently* - standing, moving, climbing. Dress and bearing read as a different life from A at a glance.

10 · `10_pc2_clue.png`

**Section / time:** PRE-CHORUS 2 · 1:17-1:21
**Lyric:** *(pre-chorus, "I don't get to keep the memory...")*
**In frame:** Close. A hand sets **one small object** - a clue - on the table beside the map and folders. Head bowed. Unfinished.
**Camera:** Close on the hand.
**Beat:** B leaves a single clue, not a hoard. The handover stays *one generation deep* - the immediate gift, not an archive.

11 · `11_c2_looks.png`

**Section / time:** CHORUS 2 · 1:24-1:31
**Lyric:** *"someone wakes in my name"* ×2
**In frame:** Close-medium. **B**, in darker practical clothes, stands and turns to the camera, looks into the lens, holds - then disappears.
**Camera:** Eye-line to lens, hold.
**Beat:** The second relay. The same ritual, a different woman. The look into the lens lands on *wakes* again - the pattern the audience now expects.

12 · `12_bridge_map.png`

**Section / time:** BRIDGE · 1:54
**Lyric:** *"Leave the subject unclaimed"*
**In frame:** Close. Two hands **close the paper map**; the subject line left **blank**. A pen rests across it.
**Camera:** Close, hold.
**Beat:** *The beginning of the break.* C refuses to mark the course. She is the one who stops passing the inheritance forward and starts ending it.

13 · `13_bridge_crosses.png`

**Section / time:** BRIDGE · 2:00-2:03
**Lyric:** *"however it's named"*
**In frame:** Wide. **C** crosses the room, away from the desk, toward the heavy door - seen from behind. Desk and lamp behind her.
**Camera:** Follows her, from behind.
**Beat:** The ritual is broken. The camera that always *found* the next Dakota now follows one who is leaving the desk. The pedal holds a single note: the leash.

14 · `14_bridge_door.png`

**Section / time:** BRIDGE · 2:03-2:12
**Lyric:** *"leave a door, not a room"* ×2
**In frame:** Medium. **C** stands at the heavy door, one hand on the handle, looking at the **door itself - not the lens**. The door is opening.
**Camera:** Hold on C and the door.
**Beat:** *The one departure we are not permitted.* She does **not** cross. She looks where our gaze cannot follow, and vanishes before walking through. She never learns if it worked.

15 · `15_final_wakes.png`

**Section / time:** FINAL CHORUS · 2:12-2:19
**Lyric:** *"someone wakes in my name"* ×2
**In frame:** Wide. **D** - plain, unadorned - stands in the room having just risen, surveying the traces left on the desk. The door behind her **stands open**.
**Camera:** Hold, wide.
**Beat:** *The caesura.* After two held beats on the open door, the camera finds D. She is the one given a door that is already open - and she is the only one who will use it.

16 · `16_final_takes.png`

**Section / time:** FINAL CHORUS · 2:28
**Lyric:** *"she's got the compass, not the blame"*
**In frame:** Close. A hand lifts the **brass compass** off the table; the loose **page of rules stays** on the desk.
**Camera:** Close on the hand.
**Beat:** *The release on "blame."* The word changes and so does the hand - D takes the direction and leaves behind the charge. The inheritance ends, quietly, in one small gesture.

17 · `17_outro_threshold.png`

**Section / time:** OUTRO · 2:36-2:50
**Lyric:** - (outro)
**In frame:** Medium-wide. **D** at the open doorway, seen from behind, stepping forward through the threshold. Light beyond.
**Camera:** Follows to the threshold - then stops.
**Beat:** The crossing. She walks through **by herself** - the thing C was never allowed to do. She takes it alone.

18 · `18_outro_empty.png`

**Section / time:** OUTRO · 2:50-3:03
**Lyric:** - (the Picardy - one unexpected warmth)
**In frame:** Wide. The room again, empty. The desk and its traces left as they were. The **door standing open**, soft warm light coming through it. No people.
**Camera:** Holds. Does not follow her out.
**Beat:** *The camera has nothing left to follow.* The chain ends. The one warmth in a minor song is the light through the open door - a room that will not be re-entered.

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Reading the board as a whole

**One room, four women, one continuous camera.** The room persists; the Dakotas do not.
**The relay is movement, never a cut** - panels 08 and 13 are the mechanism: the camera *finds* the next, or *follows* the one who leaves.
**The look into the lens** (06, 11) is the ritual - always on the word *wakes*. Panel 14 withholds it deliberately.
**The break** (12-14) and **the release** (15-18) are the two halves that give the song its shape: the inheritance refused, then walked through.

"Someone Wakes" - Storyboard Panel Descriptions