archived-videos First music video!

cameronchapman · Oct 23, 2013

Just finished up my first music video for my friend's band. I've been running a production diary here on the site, but wanted to post it separately here, too. It's password-protected for right now, as we're going to enter a couple festivals with it and at some point have a real premiere.

The video itself is done and signed off on by the band, but I'm always looking for advice on ways to improve for next time. I've already got a long mental list of things I'd do differently...

Anyway, here's the link: https://vimeo.com/77472199

Password is horizoner

ChimpPhobiaFilms · Oct 23, 2013

First shot is very noisy.

Some more camera movement would be nice as well. Faster movement seems more appropriate for this type of music.

Anyway, awesome job. Very, very well done

cameronchapman · Oct 24, 2013

ChimpPhobiaFilms said:
First shot is very noisy.

Some more camera movement would be nice as well. Faster movement seems more appropriate for this type of music.

Anyway, awesome job. Very, very well done

Yeah, the Vimeo compression made it worse than it actually is. The uncompressed version looks a lot better, though noise is still an issue. The lighting for that scene was a nightmare. It was light from my TV plus a cheap LED emergency light from Walmart. If I could do it again, I'd do a day-for-night shoot instead (which is what the TV footage is). Oh well, live and learn.

I'd like more movement as well. This is one of those times when I wish I'd gotten more coverage on the day of the shoot. It felt like we got about a billion shots, but in reality I only had about 8 decent takes to work with.

And thanks!!!

gorillaonabike · Oct 27, 2013

cameronchapman said:
Just finished up my first music video for my friend's band. I've been running a production diary here on the site, but wanted to post it separately here, too. It's password-protected for right now, as we're going to enter a couple festivals with it and at some point have a real premiere.

The video itself is done and signed off on by the band, but I'm always looking for advice on ways to improve for next time. I've already got a long mental list of things I'd do differently...

Anyway, here's the link: https://vimeo.com/77472199

Password is horizoner

It's a nice job. I'm kinda a target market as this is my kind of music.

Aside from the stuff you know about, if I were to make one criticism, I'd suggest sticking to the camera movement rule a little more.

cameronchapman · Oct 27, 2013

gorillaonabike said:
It's a nice job. I'm kinda a target market as this is my kind of music.

Aside from the stuff you know about, if I were to make one criticism, I'd suggest sticking to the camera movement rule a little more.

Thanks! And excuse my ignorance, but what are you referring to with "the camera movement rule"?

Cracker Funk · Oct 28, 2013

Nice work, and congrats! I think the film has a really nice aesthetic. Perhaps you might've crushed the blacks a little too much for my taste, but I think the camera work looks really great.

I'm also not familiar with the "camera movement rule". What's that?

I think on the next video, it might be better to have less performance footage. I didn't really get what was up with the guy watching TV, and I think the video could've benefited from having more something, maybe a story of some sort, or even just trippy visuals, I dunno exactly what, but something more than just the band performing.

Anyway, it's a solid first video, definitely one you should be proud of and to use as a jumping-off point for your next great project!

gorillaonabike · Oct 28, 2013

The rule I was given was that the camera should only ever move in one direction during each shot. I was told to know the rule, get it right and then learn to break it.

If you want an example, I edited this music vid with all of that in mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYNrFPTQqVI

This was my practice cutting in a one direction way to create strong a strong, visual style and was my first delve into movement in different directions between shots which creates dynamism (only one example here). Sure, there are plenty of other issues but I was focusing on this element throughout the edit.

Cracker Funk · Oct 28, 2013

gorillaonabike said:
The rule I was given was that the camera should only ever move in one direction during each shot. I was told to know the rule, get it right and then learn to break it.

Yeah, I've never heard of that rule, and I don't think it holds much merit, to be honest.

My best guess is that some teacher decided to put restrictive rules on their students, to keep them from doing the things that many amateurs will do with a camera.

If you give a video camera to an amateur, with no training, they behave like they have ADD. They're constantly zooming, panning, tilting, zooming again. They never compose an actual shot, they're just all over the place.

In light of this, the first person to teach me how to shoot gave us students strict rules -- every single shot had to be locked down on a tripod, with no zooms, pans or tilts. Only later, after we'd learned to shoot a scene that cut together, were we allowed to include any kind of movement.

Maybe (?) this "camera movement rule" you're citing is the same kind of restrictive rule, only intended to limit new filmmakers from shooting like they've got ADD?

gorillaonabike · Oct 28, 2013

Cracker Funk said:
Yeah, I've never heard of that rule, and I don't think it holds much merit, to be honest.

My best guess is that some teacher decided to put restrictive rules on their students, to keep them from doing the things that many amateurs will do with a camera.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not going to mention who told me this. It's pointless.

cameronchapman · Oct 28, 2013

Cracker Funk said:
Nice work, and congrats! I think the film has a really nice aesthetic. Perhaps you might've crushed the blacks a little too much for my taste, but I think the camera work looks really great.

I'm also not familiar with the "camera movement rule". What's that?

I think on the next video, it might be better to have less performance footage. I didn't really get what was up with the guy watching TV, and I think the video could've benefited from having more something, maybe a story of some sort, or even just trippy visuals, I dunno exactly what, but something more than just the band performing.

Anyway, it's a solid first video, definitely one you should be proud of and to use as a jumping-off point for your next great project!

Thanks! I've already got at least two more videos in the works with a couple of other bands, including my absolute favorite band and another band that the drummer in this video is in. Luckily my co-producer knows all these guys and has no problem just being like, "We're gonna do a video for you."

And this particular video is going to serve as a prequel to a series of videos that are going to be linked together by an overall narrative to create a short film (it'll probably end up being somewhere around 30-40 minutes, and consist of a number of stand-alone music videos tied together by narrative in between).

So yeah, looks like music videos are my thing now...luckily I have an absolutely awesome co-producer to work with. :yes: