What Is Involved In Creating A Music Video?

Hello again, everyone. Thank you so much for making time to visit our blog and spend a few minutes talking about life in the modern music business. The post you are about to enjoy was written by our friend Andrew Jones, founder of Checkered Owl Media. To learn more about his work, click here.

This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

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Every band wants a great music video, and they are right to. There is no other marketing tool quite as powerful.

When people first check out a band, most head straight to YouTube. When I have tested emails to see what promoters click on most, it’s always the videos. They are more sharable than an iTunes link and more engaging than a playlist. In fact, one study recently found that 91% of people check out a song on YouTube before purchasing. NINETY-ONE PERCENT! So, yes a great video is important.

But what does into a great video, what is the process? Everyone’s is a little different but here is mine, I tried to keep each section brief in order to give you a broad overview, any of these could be a blog post unto themselves:

Choosing a song

When a band decided to make a music video, the first step is to select a song. As a producer, sometimes I help with this process, but ultimately I leave it up to the band. Make sure to remember two things:

#1. Remember this video is going to be the first impression of your band, make sure it’s representative of your sound.

#2. Secondly, make sure there is a hook. Stick it in people’s mind’s and make sure they come back to watch again!

Writing a treatment

Next it’s time to write your treatment. This is what you will give to everyone else you want to bring on board.  A treatment outlines the core story, a few key visuals and the general feel and ethos of a project. Writing it should also force you to think through some of the issues of your video and make sure it’s cohesive. I always find it helpful to put a few pictures in as visual references for your other team members as well!

Writing a budget

Now that you have written your treatment you are ready to start to figure out your costs. Key things to remember are crew, location, gear (lights, cameras, rigging, etc.), costume, props, editing and FOOD! Trust me, hungry people aren’t fun people to get performances from.

Remember full scale videos are pricey. Most bands are poor. Find a balance and perhaps find a sponsor.

Hire crew

Next pick your crew! Most cities have a local film scene, find people that both do good work AND you like to work with. I don’t pick all my crew at this stage, but if there are key people you want in key positions get them locked down early so you can start co-ordinating schedules. Every shoot will require a different team, but to me the most critical positions on a music video are: Producer, Director, DP/Cinematographer, Make-up, Lighting, at least one swing/grip

Some of those positions can easily be combined, some can’t. Find people who know what they are doing!

Set locations

With treatment in hand, it’s time to go scouting! Find the places you created in your imagination! Hopefully you budgeted for at least a little set money…right?

Set schedule

Work with your key players, plan on everything taking 33% longer than you think it should.

Storyboard or Shot-By-Shot

music video story board rough example

Lots of people do this earlier but I like to really plan my shots at this point. I know my rough schedule, I know where we are shooting, I know who we are working with and what gear I will have at my disposal. Depending on the video, I may do a storyboard or shot-by-shot. A storyboard is more precise, which can be nice; but sometimes you want to feel things out rather than snag exact shots.

storyboard includes drawings of all major shots and can be great help to some DPs. It should also include a brief shot description.

shot-by-shot Lists every shot the director envisions. I typically also assign a shot number to each shot and include this in my scheduling.

Shoot

Nothing like it! Get everyone together and shoot everything you need. Don’t decide to fix it later, it always ends up being harder. Keep a creative and fun atmosphere. Be flexible. Listen to ideas from everyone, a lot of genius ideas can pop-up out of the blue!

Editing

This is obviously a huge topic with a million variables and worth about 5 blog posts.

In short, this is MY advice and workflow: My advice would be to use either Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier. They are the industry standards for a reason. First you need to crank out a rough cut. Get a feel for all the clips, get them in an order that feels good, run it past a few friends. Once you are feeling good about the building block that you can get into the more finicky work of colour grading and getting a final cut that you feel really great about!

Marketing

Another whole world, which I blog about fairly often. But for this post suffice it to say, make sure you share your video. Use Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, E-mail lists and whatever else you have in your arsenal. Don’t be afraid to ask fans to share. Consider Facebook ads, consider YouTube ads.

Just make sure if you took the time to do everything I described above that you get that video OUT THERE!

This post was written by Andrew Jones, editor of Checkered Owl. It originally ran on his blog, but we loved it so much we felt it deserved to shared once more on ours. If you like his work and want to read more of his writing, or if you want to be super cool and offer him full time industry employment, reach out and connect with him on Twitter.

James Shotwell