lavideofilmmaker
How to make a music video: music video production tips
Many general filmmaking principles also apply to music video production.
Some hard-earned music video tips:
1. For music video shoots, record the track that you are playing back on set as you shoot. This scratch track will help you synchronize the shots with the clean track in post-production.
2. Instruct the singer to sing properly – no half-hearted singing or, worse, miming. If they mumble or mime, it will not look right when you lay the shots against the song, because the tension and movements of the face and body will not be consistent with the sound of the song. They must sing as if you were making a real recording of the song.
3. Remember that recording the singer while you shoot and using that copy of the song for the music video is not an option. It simply doesn’t work. You need the definitive recording of the track before you shoot, and the singer must match it exactly. It takes a little practice, and as the director, it is your job to make sure it is being done properly (check out how to direct.)
4. Shoot plenty of angles, and make sure that most angles cover the entire song. If you do not shoot enough angles of the whole song, the final edit of the video might be too slow.
5. You should also shoot plenty of cutaways, also known as B-roll shots. Use these to give some variety to the video. Some directors intercut performance or dance routine shots with random cuts to shots in which the singer is neither singing nor dancing, but doing something vaguely relevant to the music video’s theme. This jump cut technique is usually disastrous in movies, unless it is used to achieve a specific effect, but it works nicely in music videos.
6. It is inefficient to shoot complicated and time-consuming setups that only cover a small part of the song – don’t schedule too many of these.
7. If there is a dance routine, make sure that the dancers know it properly, and that the lead singer is also completely at ease with it (you’d be surprised).
Editing the music video
Review all the takes and choose your favorite take for every shot. In practice, you may prefer different sections from different takes. For example, you may decide that your favorite beginning of a crane move is in take 2, whereas your favorite ending of the crane move is from take 6. That’s okay, providing of course that there is a cutaway between the two clips. If you want the crane move to be uninterrupted, which is highly unlikely in a music video, you will have to choose your favorite take and leave it uncut.
Use the waveform picture in your editing program to align the scratch track with the master copy of the track. In this way you will achieve perfect synchronization between sound and picture. Having synchronized the video clips with the track, disable the scratch sound tracks, but don’t delete them from the timeline, because you might need them again later. In this way when you scrub the timeline you will only hear the master track and you will see your music video take shape.
A nice trick I have used to edit a music video efficiently is to place all the selected clips on the timeline, one above the other on stacked video tracks. They must all be in their correct positions relative to the song, i.e. they must all be synchronized – except, of course, for the cutaways, which can be placed wherever you like.
Music video editing — a question from a reader
A reader e-mailed me the following question: “I am in the process of editing a fast-paced music video. How do you decide what cuts to use and how often? How do I know when to cut from a medium shot to a long shot to a close-up?“
My answer:
My strong belief — and the approach I always use on my own projects — is that the director needs to see the edited film/video in his/her head before anything is shot. Of course there are plenty of opportunities for improvisation and discovery both during the shoot and during the edit, but the product will be a lot better (and the improvisation much more productive) if the project is thoroughly pre-visualized beforehand.
Having said that, you can still pre-visualize the cut of the video to an extent now that you’ve shot it: listen to the track and try to see the music video playing in your head. Seeing the finished project very clearly in your head before it is finished is what directors do; this is what makes us so valuable!
With a bit of luck, specific points in the song will inspire specific cuts. Is there a crescendo? Is there a dramatic change of key near the end of the song? Does the song get faster or slower from beginning to end? These are all examples of aspects of the song that can inspire certain cutting techniques.
Sure, if the song is fast, you can use fast cuts. But your question clearly goes beyond that: you asked what specific kinds of shots you should come to in terms of close-ups, long shots etc. The answer once again lies in the song and what it makes you see and feel. You should be very familiar with all the shots, since you directed the music video: what shots do you see in your head while you listen to the song, and when exactly do you see the shots? That beautiful close-up that you worked hard to shoot…at what point in the song does it pop up in your mind? You get the idea.
In other words, having shot the music video, listening to the track should make you see specific shots at specific times. Cut the music video the way you see it in your own imagination when you listen to the song. This is not an esoteric technique by any means; it is practical, intuitive and generally productive.
Thank you, and good luck!
