Music Videos:
For starters you’re making a very short format movie, usually five minutes or less. And yet, “MTV-style” music videos are often extremely expensive and have more cuts in that five minutes than the first hour of some feature films. The nature of the song and the style of the music video itself will determine the pace of the cutting, but you needn’t spend a fortune to accomplish something close to the “high concept” look of the bigger budget projects. If you make a feature length movie on a shoestring budget it will still be compared by many people to a studio produced feature film. If you shoot your feature on video this can be one of the first things makes your production seem low budget. Music videos, on the other hand, are going to be compared to other music videos. While many music “videos” are actually shot on film, many others are not and this type of production is usually geared towards television or Internet distribution. This is one time where your “prosumer” or “semi-pro” video gear isn’t going to put you in a hole that you have to try and dig out of. One of the most exciting things about music video production is that you are generally free to let your imagination run wild. If you’re producing a video of your own music then the concept is up to you. If you’re producing it for someone else then you’ll need to work closely with the band or the songwriter to come up with a concept that everyone can get excited about. Even if the band doesn’t have a clear idea of what they want it’s a good idea to “brainstorm” with them and knock some ideas around. Ironically, in the MTV world bands often don’t have any say at all in what their music video is going to be like or who is going to make it or what they are going to be called upon to do. The record label assigns a team to the project and the band is forced to go along with whatever they come up with. (Frequently resulting in a lot of bored, stoned and or hung over musicians who would rather be at the dentist than on the set.) You probably won’t be recording any dialogue (unless you’re making one of those “mini movie” music videos that try to add some dramatic scenes to the beginning and the end of the song) but you will need to provide “playback” on the set so that the musicians can sync their singing or playing to the song. The recording you play on the set should be the same recording you will be using as the soundtrack of the final video, although a “rough mix” is acceptable as long as the tempo doesn’t change and all of the final tracks are in place so that it will all match up in the cutting phase. Be prepared to provide a fairly loud sound system for this task so that it can be heard above whatever noise the band is creating. Even if the guitars and microphones aren’t amplified for the shoot the sound of singing and strumming can be heard and if drums are involved you really need to crank up the volume. If you’re going to locations where you can’t carry around or plug in a large stereo make sure you’ve got a decent portable device for the job. (And plenty of spare batteries just in case.) You can even use the CD player in a car stereo if you have to. It’s generally got plenty of power and doesn’t have to be plugged in. You can simply use the camera microphone to record the sound exactly as it’s happening during production or you can split the signal from the playback unit and send a clean feed directly to the camera. It doesn’t really matter because you’re going to discard all of this audio anyway in the editing phase but the choice is up to you.
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