Hi everyone,
I'm a recording/mixing engineer and a musician. The first I do as a job and for fun, the latter I do just for the fun of it. This, however, doesn't mean I don't have ambitions and I'm certainly not going about it with a complete amateur mentality.
Some of you might say I'm contradicting myself, given the "no budget" part of the title and I wouldn't blame you. That's actually part of my dilemma. I have a fairly complete understanding of how complex and complicated making a good video is and how many things are bound to go wrong in the process and given my lack of budget and limited experience of video making the obvious thing to do is to scratch the idea and add it to the ever-growing list of unfulfilled aspirations. But I just can't do it, because I know that if I don't get a decent video for the song it will just fade into oblivion given how weak the local scene is and how over-saturated the internet is with mp3s and facebook pages and so on. Nowadays the only way to grab someone's attention for a couple of minutes seems to be a video and an original one at that.
It wouldn't have been a big deal if this was some band I play in - after all bands come and go and if they are serious they make an imprint, they manage to get some money for a video and so on. This song, however, is part of my very own 5 song EP and I can't tell you how much I don't want it to become just another batch of 0s and 1s on a hard-disk like the dozens of other songs and ideas I've had. If I lose momentum this is exactly what will happen so I can't hope to be able to just put it off for now until I have enough money for a good video.
What I want to know is whether it's at all realistic to expect a nice video without proper financing? Normally I wouldn't even ask but every now and then I stumble upon a gem of a video that apparently cost next to nothing and I'm also very impressed with some of the no budget work I saw on this forum. My understanding is that most of these success stories are down to there being a good/fresh/original idea behind the whole thing.
I tried coming up with such ideas but even if something sounds like it could work I'm still puzzled with how I'm going to fill almost 3 minutes with content that stays interesting throughout. To further complicate things it's a one-man project, so I can't really rely on scenes of a band playing somewhere. The one thing that's not mine in the music is the vocals so I can't use that either.
The lyrics are about people neglecting the environment and so on. I can post them if it would be helpful.
The music is dark and heavy so ideally the video should be, too.
This is the song with the lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_NJWusj-Y&hd=1
What do you reckon is my best bet?
If I go for a video with a plot it will be hard to pull it off with no budget.
If I use mainly stock footage (oil spills, landfills, etc) it will probably not look pro at all.
If I get people to play the other instruments (I'm mainly a guitarist) it might end up like just another boring band video. I want the video to induce at least some emotion.
Any other ideas?
Anyone perhaps willing to propose a script?
Any other advice?
I hope I'm not posting in the wrong subforum and I cerainly hope I haven't bored or annoyed you with my long filled-with-questions first post. Thank you for reading and looking forward to your replies!
I'm a recording/mixing engineer and a musician. The first I do as a job and for fun, the latter I do just for the fun of it. This, however, doesn't mean I don't have ambitions and I'm certainly not going about it with a complete amateur mentality.
Some of you might say I'm contradicting myself, given the "no budget" part of the title and I wouldn't blame you. That's actually part of my dilemma. I have a fairly complete understanding of how complex and complicated making a good video is and how many things are bound to go wrong in the process and given my lack of budget and limited experience of video making the obvious thing to do is to scratch the idea and add it to the ever-growing list of unfulfilled aspirations. But I just can't do it, because I know that if I don't get a decent video for the song it will just fade into oblivion given how weak the local scene is and how over-saturated the internet is with mp3s and facebook pages and so on. Nowadays the only way to grab someone's attention for a couple of minutes seems to be a video and an original one at that.
It wouldn't have been a big deal if this was some band I play in - after all bands come and go and if they are serious they make an imprint, they manage to get some money for a video and so on. This song, however, is part of my very own 5 song EP and I can't tell you how much I don't want it to become just another batch of 0s and 1s on a hard-disk like the dozens of other songs and ideas I've had. If I lose momentum this is exactly what will happen so I can't hope to be able to just put it off for now until I have enough money for a good video.
What I want to know is whether it's at all realistic to expect a nice video without proper financing? Normally I wouldn't even ask but every now and then I stumble upon a gem of a video that apparently cost next to nothing and I'm also very impressed with some of the no budget work I saw on this forum. My understanding is that most of these success stories are down to there being a good/fresh/original idea behind the whole thing.
I tried coming up with such ideas but even if something sounds like it could work I'm still puzzled with how I'm going to fill almost 3 minutes with content that stays interesting throughout. To further complicate things it's a one-man project, so I can't really rely on scenes of a band playing somewhere. The one thing that's not mine in the music is the vocals so I can't use that either.
The lyrics are about people neglecting the environment and so on. I can post them if it would be helpful.
The music is dark and heavy so ideally the video should be, too.
This is the song with the lyrics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_NJWusj-Y&hd=1
What do you reckon is my best bet?
If I go for a video with a plot it will be hard to pull it off with no budget.
If I use mainly stock footage (oil spills, landfills, etc) it will probably not look pro at all.
If I get people to play the other instruments (I'm mainly a guitarist) it might end up like just another boring band video. I want the video to induce at least some emotion.
Any other ideas?
Anyone perhaps willing to propose a script?
Any other advice?
I hope I'm not posting in the wrong subforum and I cerainly hope I haven't bored or annoyed you with my long filled-with-questions first post. Thank you for reading and looking forward to your replies!
but it's helped tremendously with visualising and organising my ideas. Once I have enough material I'll finally be able to start dealing with the actual practicalities - equipment, lighting, participants, etc.