AHHB R&D | Producing Your Own Music Video – Part 1

Words By TNGlive

When you have a clear idea about how you want your music to sound, and there is currently no comparison around, it’s likely you’re the best person to go about bringing that idea to life. So maybe you’ll learn whatever instrument, VST plugin, or push the audio editor of your choice to its limits in order to craft that new original sound exactly how you hear it in your head. You’ll probably put so much effort into this area, such as finding the right professionals to do the necessary specialised tasks of mixing and mastering, yet when it comes to the visuals to accompany your masterpiece, you’re likely to wholly outsource that task with a basic brief of what you want.

Hate it or love it, the heavily driven social media promotion of music projects has amplified the necessity for the visual presentation of your music to be on point. No one is going to care more than you to bring your visual idea to life, and so here we’ll look at how you can produce your own music video once you’re in a position where you would otherwise be hiring someone else to put it together for you.

“Owning a camera doesn’t make someone a director.”

If you’re developing with your comrades, and the polish of your music is as much a work in progress as the polish of their visuals, that’s a good strategy for the long run. Growing together is a great investment. However, if the levels of proficiency are at different stages, beware of paying for subpar services. The same way a beat maker is not necessarily a producer, it’s important to do away with the idea that just because someone owns a camera and knows how to record images automatically means he’s a director or cinematographer

You’re better off lending that camera to a professional cinematographer, or to someone who works as a camera crew professional in a supporting role for a cinematographer. The latter often has ambitions of one day becoming a cinematographer, and working on your music video is a professional opportunity to showcase their skills.

Typical Film Department Structure 

(For your perusal to spot supporting roles for your master plan)

Preproduction.

Your very first step, is taking this clear vision you have in your head, and committing it to paper. There’s an official way to right a script, and a general guide is that one page is equal to one minute of screen time. If you download free scriptwriting software like Celtx, it’ll format it for you correctly. The important thing here though, is just writing down all the ideas that make up the music video you envision. You could alternative do this using index cards which you make by cutting up little rectangular pieces of paper and writing descriptions of each scene onto separate cards.

Script Breakdown.

Doing the above, sets you up with an efficient way of breaking down a thorough list of all the people and things you’ll need. It’s literally listing all the things you’ll be seeing in front of the camera, and the cast you’ll need in each scene.

Scheduling

Out of all the things you’ll need to worry about producing your music video, scheduling is going to be the make or break of your production. It’s not so much about dates on the calendar, but rather the number of days you’ll need for the things and people you’ve listed in your script breakdown. Consider the following example. Maybe you want a scene where police arrive at a location at the beginning of your music video, then by the end of the showdown that has happened throughout the music video, they arrest some characters. Maybe you also want a drone shot of your city at sunrise and a drone shot at night to close the video.

Your basic schedule could look like this

Thanks to your script break down, you’ll already have every detail of things you’ll need from big items like a location to minor things like hand cuffs. Your scheduling process is to then break down how much time you’ll need with each item and person (model, actor, friend). Time is going to be money, and the idea with scheduling is to maximise your time wisely. For instance, in our example we have 2 cops and 2 characters scheduled for 2 days. But thanks to scheduling, you can spot that perhaps you shoot the opening and closing on the first day, you’ll only need 4 cast members for the one day. This means you’ll only need the two characters (non-police) on the second day. Even if friends are going to be working for free, the least you can do is feed them, and so now you’ve reduced catering costs for day two.

Budgeting

Your schedule will dictate your budget. At this point, you’ll have to research the costs of everything.  How much is it going to cost to hire an interested professional assistant camera person to be your cinematographer? How much is it going to cost to hire a director if you don’t want to wear this hat and instead want someone to collaborate with on the creative side? How much is a cop car? Google is your friend here. Search for local film crew agents, and some would have their rate cards available on their website. Alternatively, investing in a directory produced specifically for the film industry, for example The Whole Lot, is a great way of accessing contact details for almost any relevant service you can think of for your production.

Your basic budget could look like this:

We’ve looked at the bigger picture that you’ll deal with as producer of your own music video. In parts 2, 3, & 4, we’ll look at details you’ll need for basic knowledge of each department because ultimately, the buck will literally stop with you. You’re better prepared knowing the difference between luxuries and necessities while still in preproduction, to limit nasty nasty surprise costs as much as possible during the latter stages of production and post production.