What would you have done differently?

[thome]

In an effort to improve iv recently stoped looking for the IT camera and have been spending more time trying master the art of story telling, movement etc.I shot two music video recently and was wondering what any of you might have done differently in terms of movement etc??

hip hop music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRJOrn0my_s

R n B music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgE7p...ture=endscreen

[starcentral]

was the fire real in the hip hop video? where did you do that without causing trouble?

[Ryan Patrick O'Hara]

was the fire real in the hip hop video? where did you do that without causing trouble?

Africa?

[legrevedotcom]

I'm in my young years in regards to music videos as well, but as you say yourself you really need to get into the whole story telling thing... OR... align yourself with someone who wants to do that part. You really shouldn't be wearing all the hats, it only makes you do 50% or each instead of 100% of one thing (IMO).

Video one was more of a performance vid than an actual story. Video two began to have something, but it was like the story never really took off or reached a climax.
It's pretty hard telling a story in 3:30 min, but possible.
Instead of jump cutting to the same scene, I might have used "hidden" elements in the scene as cuts to either emphasize the story or performance.
Also his two girls in video one was dragging down the action. They looked so stiff and uninteresting. Get them to move... make them underline how cool a guy he is. I almost got the feeling that they didn't believe in him hehe

One of my favourite videos (now over a year old) is Rihannas "We found love feat. Calvin Harris"... now that's story telling, and turned out to be a damn good video.

If you want great performance, her "Where have you been" video is pretty cool too.

[starcentral]

Legrevedotcom, I couldn't agree with you more. Here are two videos I did recently, let me know if you get the story out of video # one. But for video # two I can tell you it was failed attempt to tell a story and so ended up a performance video which even now when I watch it, makes me cringe...

http://youtu.be/yiMZx_IrbYc?hd=1


http://youtu.be/5E58qNzYzho?hd=1

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

In an effort to improve iv recently stoped looking for the IT camera and have been spending more time trying master the art of story telling, movement etc.I shot two music video recently and was wondering what any of you might have done differently in terms of movement etc??

hip hop music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRJOrn0my_s

R n B music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgE7p...ture=endscreen

I've pretty much stopped watching music videos which have 'hip hop' somewhere in the name or search terms. While I'm sure you spent some amount of time setting up the production... the fact is that the shots pretty much were sort of 'all the same', despite using a 'crane' or similar to get a little bit of a high angle shot down on the talent.

For a 'story' type video, I don't know that the performer of the music need be in the video at all... save perhaps as 'bookends'.

With that in mind, part of my problem perhaps with 'music videos' especially the 'hip hop' variety, is they pretty much have the performer in every shot, which focuses me the viewer almost exclusively on the performer... and frankly, many performers are not all that photogenic... add that to someone who pretty much just stays in the same place and only makes jerky body movements in time with the music... well anyway...

In the R&B clip, I think there was more of 'story' going on, but there the choice on framing of the singing talent put me off... way off... with the wandering camera motion, and the little jerk cuts of the 'story' put me off there...

[KyranFord]

I wrote out a longer reply earlier today and then someone unknowingly closed out the browser at work before I clicked reply. I'm going to simplify what I remember having.

For the hip-hop video. The opening wasn't impressive because of two main reasons. The frame was uneven, which could have easily been fixed in post by a simple crop and rotate, and the text was placed in a spot that made it rather illegible. With any project, it's obvious that you don't want to push your viewers away, especially in the first five seconds. I saw the opening and didn't want to watch it. The only reason I stayed was because of the location and set design. After the intro, it started to get better. The cinematography and lighting were impressive, but after about forty-five seconds to a minute, I couldn't handle the jump cuts between such repetitive shots. Regardless of it having a story or not, there should have been tons of B-roll-- and there wasn't really any at all. I'm not sure whether or not you directed this, but either way, you were in a position to take initiative. If you were directing it, you should have taken initiative by gathering the B-roll; if you weren't directing it, you should have told the director what was needed. If he declined, then there's nothing you can do and it's his fault that this music video doesn't have the hit to meet up with the potential it had. As your main concern here seems to be cinematography, I will say that the lighting and camera movement were good throughout. The movement between panning and 'jibbing' display the scenery/location well, but those annoying jump cuts are ruining it.

For the R&B video: I didn't like the cinematography as much as in the hip-hop video. The camera movement was lacking, as not as much in the hip-hop video. It felt like bumpy jib shots and pans back and forth. As stated above, this one had more of a story, but just never really reached a critical point.

I definitely liked the hip-hop video's cinematography better-- to the point that if there was more B-roll footage and it was edited better, it would have the potential to compete with some of the biggest named rap artists' videos out there. Both were lacking in story, but there's not really a whole lot you can do with a hip-hop video without tons of pre-production. I would guess to the niche audience, the first one hit it home, so success in that genre. Again, your main focus seems to be storytelling, so keep working at it.