First Music Video

[RyanH]

This forum is always such a great source of information and insight so I decided to sign up because I finally get a chance to share this super low budget music video I made.

I'm friendly with the band and they didn't have any money really, I did it partly as a favor to them.  I had never done a music video before so I also saw it as a creative opportunity to see how far I could  stretch things.  And after several locations fell through it seemed like all I was going to have to work with was the bands (very small) basement/practice space for the span of about 9 hours.  Set up took about 2 hours. Shot for around 6 (with one of the three members having to leave for an hour in the middle for personal reasons).  

Used about 60 dollars worth of black fabric to try and black out the walls of the basement. The band bought the masks and fake money for almost nothing on Amazon.

Everything else I already owned from doing weddings and short films.  I shot everything with a gh5-sigma 18-35 combo. Had one big light with a soft box for the main source and two small leds backlighting .

Edited it myself in less than 2 weeks to meet the deadline of their album release.

Hope people enjoy, I love feedback!

…and for those of you that can't enjoy some goofy political satire, you've been warned lol

 

[Mark Romero 2]

Looks good.

Did you use a gimbal? Or were you shooting handheld?

Because considering the energy in the song, the footage might be a bit too smooth.

Also, I would have maybe thought about giving most of the footage a cross-processing grade (but I grew up on 80's music videos, so that's probably why I think EVERYTHING benefits from a cross-processing grade).

Either way, good job working with the limited budget.

[RyanH]

Thanks Mark! 

I didn't use a gimbal, everything was on a tripod with the exception of some close ups where I went handheld. Also handheld a couple of takes of the band where I had them play along with the song at half speed and sped up the footage in post for the more chaotic feel in the latter third of the song. 

Originally I was going to try and mask out the ceiling in an attempt to throw the entire background into a deep black void so I kept most of the shots locked off.  I completely agree about the smoothness being a little off from the energy of the song. As the idea for the video to have a 70's grindhouse scratched-film-print look came to us it seemed unnecessary to worry about the basement ceiling.  So in retrospect I would have loved to have cared less about framing it for that and done more loose improvisational shots.  All the movement in any of the tripod shots are strictly pans, zooms, and shake done in post to try and keep things interesting. 

Great idea about the cross-processing, although I'm not as familiar with it as I would like to be. Any good points of reference on that? 

Thanks for watching and thanks especially for the feedback! 

 

[kye]

Great stuff!

This style of music isn't as high up my preference list as it used to be years ago, but the video seemed to strike a good balance of heaviness, humour, satire, and with a slight overtone of mayhem in the faster bit at the end.

Overall, I'd say that with the limitations you had it was a pretty good result.

In terms of missed opportunities (and armchair quarterbacking) I think that slightly more mayhem might have suited, especially in the heavier parts, and maybe some shakier camera movement and strobe style effects might have been all you needed.  Both of which can be done in post if you know how to push your NLE a bit harder than most do.  Of course, that stuff takes time.   I used to watch a YT channel from a guy that edits music videos and he was always breaking down music video effects and re-creating them, and the take-away I got from him was that music videos are kind of the experimental bleeding-edge of mainstream film-making.  You can almost do whatever you want and it's not too extreme for an average person to watch, whereas if you made a TV show or movie at even 25% of that intensity people would say it was "weird" and not be into it.

I look forward to the next one!!

[Mark Romero 2]

On 2/20/2020 at 5:16 AM, kye said:

I used to watch a YT channel from a guy that edits music videos and he was always breaking down music video effects and re-creating them,

Which YT channel is that???

[kye]

3 hours ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

Which YT channel is that???

Justin Odisho - https://www.youtube.com/user/Justthisgood

His channel is a bit of a mixture of stuff, but if you go back through his back catalog then you'll see videos where he re-creates various effects from music videos using PP / AE.  I think he might have named those ones "music video breakdown" or something so searching might be useful.

[Mark Romero 2]

1 hour ago, kye said:

Justin Odisho - https://www.youtube.com/user/Justthisgood

His channel is a bit of a mixture of stuff, but if you go back through his back catalog then you'll see videos where he re-creates various effects from music videos using PP / AE.  I think he might have named those ones "music video breakdown" or something so searching might be useful.

Thanks. I'll check it out.