Need tips on making a music video!
 

Im thinking of making a music video for a local band.They are a rap group som Im thinking fisheye, shiny effects and cars:)
But of course not to much of it.
But what should I know before getting startet on such a project?
Im filming the video with my Sony VX1000E (PAL) and I will hopefully soon have a Century Optics .3x Ultra Fisheye.
Should I shoot it 16:9 or 4:3?Im totally new to making a music video.
Please share everything you know and what you think it's important for me to know before starting and while shooting this video.
Oh, Im very low on money just so that is known.

-mS

Hot chicks in bikinis shakin their booty.

Works for every rap group out there.

I'd shoot in 16:9. They'll like that. All the big rap videos are being shot it 16:9 now. You can fit more booty in a 16:9 frame.

And that's what it's all about.



Booty


Keep it real

Dylan

Don't forget to shoot highlights of their bling bling.

IGNORE ALL THESE PEOPLE! If you just wanna add another reason why hip hop is a joke than make a typical music video... but if you are seriously down, come up with some sick ass creative concepts... show the fundamentals or something. However, if this is a pay gig and the rappers are wack and want you to make a wack video than you are kinda under the gun. Best of luck!

If you want to shoot 16:9, i'd suggest getting a anamorphic lens and not run with the internal 16:9. This provided of course that you do not have a high end camera with a 16:9 CCD. If you can't afford to purchase one (around $500-1000 methinks) you can probably rent it.

OR you can just shoot it in 4:3 and compose the shot for 16:9 with letterboxing in post. Just remember that you have to shoot and compose the image with cropping off at the top and bottom. This has the added advantage of being able to pan up and down slightly to finetune your composition of the shot. Just remember that this is not anamorphic in any way, just looks widescreen on all tv's.

As for the booty & bling bling. It's in the end mostly up to the band and the record label. Even if the band wants 23 young nubile chicks strutting around buttt nekkid, the label will most likely say no. (There are numerous examples of this) which means you will have to go back and re-edit and blur/pixelize parts of the video. Basically talk over the idea you have for the video with the band and make sure they are happy with the idea before you start shooting.

Another few useful tips when doing music videos:

* Length. Anything over 3 min starts to become to long... (4 is acceptable, 5 is not, 6 is out the window and will only be shown in very selected shows/stations)

* Explicit language. Many stations will not play it unless they recieve a blanked version (where you tone down the vocal track when the bad man says bad words :) If ever possible, make sure the band / record label gives you this track to work with.

* intro/outro's. Just like with songs, if it starts and ends in 280 mph, it will be hard for a VJ to fit into his program. When in doubt, fade to black :)

* Keep it snappy. Talent (ie. the artist) hates to have to wait for you to get your act together. Make sure every shot is plan and that you do have a shotlist of whats going to be done. Especially if you are renting anything (studios, gear, actors. etc).

* Shoot LOTS of fillers. What you do not want to end up with is running out of material while editing. So make sure you shoot a lot of fill out materials. Voice synced and not.

* Make sure your end result is up to broadcast specs in regard to range of colours/lumination and sound. If this is not met, you may get a return from the station saying "we can't play this" (usually with a few well chosen words as to your competence :)

In the end, remember that a music video is nothing but a commercial for the artist. And the more exposure "your" video gets, the better for you.

If ive forgotten any vital part, lets hope our resident Music video maestro Mr. Munthe steps in and corrects me :)

Good luck,
Henrik

As Henrik stated, he has no budget.

I am also assuming from the wording of his post that this group is not signed!

I shot a music video for a friend earlier this year. i turned up expecting to be 'one of the dancers', and found that none of the camera crew had turned up, and that I was the only person there that had any real experience with video cameras. And they were lame. 2 old panasonic camcorders with very floppy screens! I had to set up & gel the lights, choose all the shots etc. My friend I was doing this for was the rapper in the song, so I guess I was directing as well!

I ended up putting one camera on a tripod facing the group of dancers. I left this recording while i hand held the other, dipping in and out the crowd as I pleased.

In my limited experience, I found the most important thing with music videos is that you like, or at least can appreciate, the tune. Discuss your ideas for the shoot with the band members, and be sure you all agree on what you want the outcome to look like.

*The easiest thing may be to get a group of friends & groupies who like the music, and simulate a party/club scene, with each band member rapping his or her/verses. If there are musicians, include them too, no-one will mind that their instruments are unplugged.

If you can do a scene in their studio, that will add credibility. if you know someone who owns a pro studio, use that. Even better!

16:9 does look kinda cool, but remember at the end of the day it means you are conveying less information to your audience...although I don't suppose music videos are meant for conveying information...

My video looked surprisingly good when finished, although this is partly due to Natalie being extremely fast on the uptake in terms of post production!

enjoy... I'm sure you will!

Like atomicworkshop said, ignore the other rap videos, as soon as I see a rap video with the chicks, especially the lowrider cars, which I find pretty funny, the rappers biting the culture of Chicanos, trying to turn it into a gangsta thing, I turn off the tv. One of the rap videos I like a lot is for the song, "I'm Coming Out", by Puff Daddy and I think the other guy was MASE and also Big something, I forgot his name, but it was shot in a wind tunnel and just the guys rapping, some dancing. Make a video that stands apart from other rap videos, if the guys want a standard bikini girls, slick car video then in the end if they are paying for the video, it's their call, but explain to the guys that they will only end up looking like every other video out there, seen one rap video, pretty much seen them all.

the ones like that Puffy Daddy video stand out in my mind and I can't even remember the other videos. Plus if you can, get another camera and shoot everything from two angles, even shoot other stuff while you are shooting with the camera, one camera with the fisheye the other with a normal lens, you will be so glad you did it. My moto now is, you can never have too many cameras. we made a video using mainly my XL-1 and it was time consuming to shoot with only one camera, we'd shoot them singing from a head on shot, then play the cd again and then shoot it from the side, with 2 cameras shoot both angles at once, and as mentioned before, shoot everything, lots of closeups, wide shots of everyone, heck, even get shots of the guys holding the camera and act like they are shooting themselves. It's better to shoot so much stuff that you have plenty left over than not shoot enough and you need to fill in that 15 seconds but you have nothing to use since you used up all your shots.

We barely got by using my one camera, but during the live performance part, we shot that with a couple of 3ccd Hi-8's and a sony VX-1000.

let us know how it turns out, we are all here for you if you have any more questions, need advice, etc... good luck.

oh yeah, during the shoot, keep track of the time codes and write down the times of particular shots that you want to use, it will help speed things up in post if you know all the shots that came out great, or else you'll end up having to look through every minute of tape to see where that cool shot that looked great when you filmed it.

<<<-- Originally posted by chorizosmells :oh yeah, during the shoot, keep track of the time codes and write down the times of particular shots that you want to use, it will help speed things up in post if you know all the shots that came out great, or else you'll end up having to look through every minute of tape to see where that cool shot that looked great when you filmed it. -->>>

I can second that a few 1000 times :) I just came back from a music video shoot, 215 takes, 32 scenes, 5 dv tapes worth of material for a 3 min 30 secs video. That would have been a nightmare unless you had a good assistant who could keep track of what take to do, what scene, what track etc.

Another thing that helps alot is do your preparations carefully. For this shoot i isolated the different lyrics parts and made a cd with every single scene we needed (with lyrics) as separate tracks. And since we also did every lyrical part in 3 ways (normal, 50% faster and 50% slower) it would have been impractical to just have 1 cd, and get the sound guy to fast forward to the right time.

Also of course, plan out every shot you plan to take, different camera angles, etc. And write this down into a shotlist. This is what your assistant then uses to keep track of what shot you have made, what is next, what take corresponds to what timecode etc.

It also helps if you have a separate monitor hooked up for the assitant to watch and note down timecodes for each take.

All in all, those 215 takes, 32 scenes and 5 DV (or rather DVCAM) tapes took just over 9 hours to shoot, including 1.5 hour lunch break. If we wouldn't have been prepared, we'd still be shooting.

(I'll be posting images soon :)

/Henrik Bengtsson
DocuWild

your in norway so im sure there are more interesting things to shoot for your video then "cars and booty".hip hop(not RAP) is an art form unlike no other so why make a video that looks like someone elses especially a weak commercial group from the USA. as a true fan of real hiphop i will usually watch the video shows to see if any commercial artist/label has the guts to actually drop a positive record to the masses. maybe the closet so far for the past month or so is SLUM VILLAGE which doesnt praise the all mighty dollar,over priced sweatshop clothing and rented cars and actually stepped forth with an artistic video. if any of you watch BET or MTV just mute the volume the next time a "RAP" video comes on you will think you are watching a cadillac or mercedes commercial or maybe soft porn even. i could go on forever about the state of hip hop and how hoororible the commercial stuff is today but all im saying is if the group that you are working with has a true artistic vision then you should show that in the video. dont be overcome by what the general public wants to see or hear and produce some fake fantasy lifestyle video that will look like everyone else tryin to get a piece of the "RAP" game pie.

Thanks for all the tips, you guys are the best.I think Ive read trough all the posts 50 times now to try learning it all good.
My biggest concern is really to find the best location, because I can't build a stage with fake rain effects +++ so I gotta make it simple, but at the same time pretty decent.
If somebody have seen the music video for the song "Rainy Dayz" with Mary J Blige feat. Ja Rule, it's awsome...very simple with amazing rain effects.
So I basicly want dark surroundings with maybe some light breaking trough some windows or something, wet floor and I'll try to film a rain scene under a street light at night.
God, I have so many ideas...making music vidoes seems so fun, can't wait to start for full on this project even though Im just 17....I have alot to learn, but I ahve the time of my life learning it all:)
Matthew: I will try to stay away from the hype, I totally undersatnd what you mean.
I think I will manage to get a second camcorder now so we will be shooting the video woth one Sony VX1000E(PAL) and one Sony PD-150P(PAL).

Once again, you guys are the best, and all of you have so much to learn away it seems, thanks for the tips/help so far!!!!

-Marius

Try to have a decent tv on the set so you can try to match the color balance of the cameras, you don't want to trust the
camera viewfinders, run some color bars through the tv to get a good balance on it. Do your best to shoot it right the first time, color balance, etc... the less stuff you have to fix in post the better.

And of course don't forget to post the video somewhere on the web so we can all check it out. It doesn't matter how young or old you are, as long as you are out there shooting and making it happen. Good luck, your'e gonna have a blast.

Maurius

The last video I did I ran sound from playback CD directly into the camera, which made aligning all the clips very easy once I got to the editing...I suppose you could include a marker tone on the cd prior to the song as well.

Make sure at least one of your shots is a locked down overall shot or close-up of the singer---something safe, to cut to if all of your tricky stuff fails at the same spot in the song (always happens to me).

Barry

suggested software
 

If you are using Windows as your editing platform.
I would strongly suggest Vegas Video 3. Not only a great DV NLE, but has built in multitrack audio recording and mixing. Supports Audio timing down to sample based (even more accurate than frame based). supports professional sound cards and audio up to 24/96. Excellent built in audio and vido effects in this package. Might be the best thing out there for aspiring Music Video directors.

You can download a full working trial version from Sonic Foundry
at http://www.sonicfoundry.com, click on software menu and follow the screens for Vegas Video.

Music Video Demo
 

Howdy. Below is a rap music video shot with an XL-1 all with the 3:1 lens in Frame mode. This was shot in 2 days with 3 locations. It was cut with Premiere.

Music Video - Say!

(high speed)
http://198.65.158.133/musicvideos/say2/SAY300K2.asx

(dial up)
http://198.65.158.133/musicvideos/say2/SAY56K2.asx

Re: Music Video Demo
 

<<<-- Originally posted by James Emory : Howdy. Below is a rap music video shot with an XL-1 all with the 3:1 lens in Frame mode. This was shot in 2 days with 3 locations. It was cut with Premiere.

Music Video - Say!

(high speed)
http://198.65.158.133/musicvideos/say2/SAY300K2.asx

(dial up)
http://198.65.158.133/musicvideos/say2/SAY56K2.asx -->>>

James,

What equipment did you use to shoot the videos (i.e. - Glidecam, crane, tripod, hand held, etc.)?