Erasure • Features • Behind The Scenes
'Breathe' Video Storyboard
The video opens on a galaxy of stars, a whole myriad of sky as the camera floats leisurely down from above, amidst a rainfall.
A tall financial building enters the shot - it seems to stretch virtually to the heavens as we follow it down into a busy street scene...
Near the windows of each neon lit shop (some lights flickering), many people hurriedly make last minute preparations for the end of a working day, milling around purposefully in tight huddled bunches against the austere elements. Disassembling fruit and veg stalls and locking up shop doors...
Andy stands from a shop door, a small girl is seen arriving on scene in a desperate condition fatigued, freezing and wrought by hunger, a cherub like face perched within her large hat and matted hair, no shoes and clutching a few boxes of matches to sell. Singing, Andy casts his glance towards her while others ignore...
Accidentally dropped by the little girl, the matches are split onto the ground. Hurriedly, she tries to pick them up but the dances dance as if mocking her and flee from sight. In her weak condition she gives up the chase. She approaches each passer by, pleading with dignity that they might buy her last match or two, (her desperation key of the tragedy / sympathy of the story), eyes large and weepy, but the faces of these villagers are never revealed, and each becomes distorted and darkened by shadow as they are approached, deeply anonymous, ultimately elusive as though they were ghosts.
We see Andy and Vince on this journey intercut within this story. The camera always returns to them within every situation the girl finds herself in as they perform the song and the view the girl from afar...
We find her slumped at the foor of a rubbish skip as the light dims, wanes and extinguishes, the city centre is now at peace, dark and cold, the rain comes to a stand still.
From the darkness her face appears angelical in form, by lighting one by one the matches in her bundl, she is found in the light. Little animated match people appear on the snow bed beofre her, skipping and dancing, singing among acorns and leaves, and the girl finds joy and warmth in their play, as lit matches fall around them landing near as the girl drops them to illuminate the scene.
She is enraptured by them and fulfilled with glee at their celebrations, her face brimming with joy, starry illuminations flood the screen as snow falls, rapture!
Then a door nearby opens, and the shop owner (possibly Andy?) takes her in out of the cold, leaving the burning matches betwixt the rubbish in the skip which soon becomes enveloped by the fire and our match people become lost from one another, struggling through the smoke and haze (finding its hard to breathe), desperately searching, until ultimately they find one another and can at last be in each others arms as the light envelops them.
The little girl is seen looking tenderly from the window as the camera rises again to the stars.
Fin