New Music Video & an Important Lesson Learned.

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dwnsthballer

Well-known member
Hey all,

Before I go into my post, I’d like to just say a few words.

It has come to my obvious attention that this board is not particularly fond of rap music, which is completely understandable, however, if you are going to view this video, please have the courtesy to leave the sound on (I know most of you will turn the sound off). I know you may not like it, but part of the music video, of course, is the music. Also, read the entire post before posting comments. Very important information and lesson.

Now, I finally have a final version of the music video I’ve been working on. Check it out, feedback appreciated.

It was shot with a DVX100B, some lowel light kits (Omni & Totas).

www.greenbench.tv/videos/LG.wmv

I learned a lot from this video from a completely different stand point. In the past I’ve done cheap videos ($100 and under), and they’ve come out good, but after this video, I’m no longer doing any music videos without a budget of at least $1000. I busted my butt so hard for this video, having only 2 weeks to take it from first listening to finished product (of course they allowed me a little more time to get some more scenes in), not to mention that these guys were extremely cheap and in the end, they didn’t want to invest any money. So everything in this video is by a stroke of luck and lots of favors (with some skills involved too). Every idea I had that involved any money was immediately shot down (renting gear, locations, hiring actors and models, etc). Don’t ask me why I stayed on board.

I know in this business, you’ll be put under tremendous pressure and tight deadlines, but I’m honestly starting to grow a business backbone and realize that the people who aren’t willing to invest into the work that they want you to do, are not worth the hassle.

Enjoy!
 
Good job bro. Nice shutter speed selection. Looks like you did some or all those camera shakes in post? Song wasn't bad, i'm not a hip hop hater, i do alot of work in the hip hop world as well, so i tolerate it hah. But yeah bro good job for budget/what you had at hand. You gotta stand your ground man, there's always people out there who try and size you down and get you to do it for free or for close to nothing, or they'll give you the good ol' "i know some one else who will do it for $100" Hah. Check out my latest video, i had about a week to put it all together and edited the vid in about a week and a half. It's on my website Janus "If I Were You" on www.noahshulman.com
 
Thanks inspire,

All the camera shakes were done on site. Originally it wasn't planned because supposedly 100+ people were suppose to show up for the car, which turned into like 10, so I decided to add some camera shake to throw off the audiences attention at the fact that there's like 10 people there lol.

I did some motion tracking in AE with the words. I love high shutter speeds; it gives a sense of action (to me atleast).

I definitely grew some muscle and backbone with this video. I was able to convince them to let me cut the third verse out because things would have got extremely repetitive, and they agreed, and also they let me have complete creative control over the free stuff lol. But overall, this video was a huge ball of stress that is now gone.
 
I liked it, the only thing is the bouncing camera got annoying after about a minute into it but all the shots looked really clean and pro looking. One question, how did you get the shot where the backround is all white with the people in the front, what did you use for the backround? I've been thinking of different ways to do it but I kinda' don't want to build this huge structure.
 
Thanks Lost,

I had a 10'x12' white backdrop (we use for photoshoots), and I just stuck two Lowel 750w Totas up close so that it was over exposed, then I put the talent in front of that, and lit them with two Totas that were diffused, so that it evened out to giving the backdrop a solid white look and the talent a clean lighting.

I discovered it one day while breaking down a set, I was standing against a wall and I noticed in the camera that the light next to me made the wall (which was an off white color) solid white while I was still pretty well lit (not over exposed). It's alot easier than trying to key or paying hundreds of dollars to rent a facility. You can either buy a white backdrop, or use a big white wall or buy some white sheets from a store for a king sized bed and hang it on a wall.
 
My favorite shots are the swivel around the car dolly. I don't know how you did that but it looked cooler than just a normal rounded dolly. Shutter speed maybe? And then the super close-up from the side of the rapper with the black background and all you can see are his hand and his mouth (towards the end). Great shot. The white background stuff was cool too. Thanks for the tip on how to do it. I still don't understand how the background doesn't blow out the DVX though, or leave a hallow effect around the person.

As for the rappers, I wouldn't sweat it because those guys were horrible. And I like rap! The beat was repetitive, unoriginal, and the lead guy was boring. Bland, middle-of-the-road lyrics and style.

I'm personally the kind of guy that likes a little story in the video. Because if you don't have that, then you're just trying to fill up space with cool shots. And it sounds like you didn't have the money or time to get enough of those. But it sounds like you learned your lesson. Good luck.
 
I sat in the back of a pickup truck and did a U-turn :D

I love videos with stories, and personally I'm a socially conscious rapper fan (Lupe, Common, Talib, etc). But this was catchy, all it needed was a dance.

Make sures there's space between the actors and the lights on the background, otherwise you'll blow out your talent.
 
All I will say is...a lot of people here use macs and while you can run windows media player on a mac I find it's rather slow and often doesn't work very well. It's always nice to provide a quicktime if y'know what I mean :)
 
Yeah, I second on the quicktime version...
Buffering.... Buffering.... Buffering....

Good looking video, keep up the great work!
 
FFrei59571 said:
you guys need to get flip4mac... makes a hell of a difference.
Click to expand...

Sure does, I can't even tell if I'm watching a wmv file anymore. It's great.

Anyways, nice music video. I really liked the shot of the guy lit in black limbo, the hot rimlight/backlight on him looked really nice. The whole splitting up the frame thing worked well too.

Was it just me or did the stuff with them outside all seem a little bit washed out? That was the only problem I had with it. You kept my attention all the way through though, even if I wasn't interested in the music, which is definitely a good thing. Great job man.
 
Yeah man good job. I dug that shot on the black background. Too bad the guy you hooked up with was sub-par, you gotta find the talent in your town.

Unlike some on this board I do like hip-hop videos. You generally have a license to go crazy with the editing and so on, and subtle cinematography is usually not required...but there's a lot of wack MCs with weak beats out there doing nothin' but frontin' if you know what I mean. But I'm still interested 'cause of the good videos that are out there, the Welcome to Detroit video and the "Breathe" video by Fabulous being a few of my favorites (for the beats and editing) but it's hard to find the people that are serious about making it in the rap game as they claim in their lyrics. I mean c'mon it's your career, right?
 
"All I will say is...a lot of people here use macs and while you can run windows media player on a mac I find it's rather slow and often doesn't work very well. It's always nice to provide a quicktime if y'know what I mean "

Likewise, us PC users would appreciate wmv files from Mac users if possible. I can't view a lot of the submissions here because the latesst version of QT interferes with After Effects...

Nice work on the video! It looks really good. You've got some skills, don't be afraid to charge for it. But I see that the lesson was learned - just chalk it up to tuition for the school of life and move ahead. Yeah, you should have gotten $1000 for that easy...I can see that you spent some time there...
 
Thanks guys,

The outside stuff was washed out purposely. The original footage was just waaaaay to saturated.

I believe that even rap videos can have some cinematography, it's just a way of innovating it. I had to do a lot of convincing to tell these guys that, "Hey, we can't just go to a random room and shoot. Steps need to be taken". I also want to bring a new era where 3/4th of the video isn't half naked women. I think it insults our intelligence that we can't watch a video without a naked woman. Granted, an attractive actress playing a role is not bad, but if she has to be wearing a thong to get across the point that you're from the streets, that's where it's a problem to me. However, change takes time, and the record labels probably woudn't care to much for an enlightened movement of music videos. So until then, I'll keep dreaming and trying.
 
video looks real professional, nice clean images. I like the split screen stuff too. The only thing that I noticed that someone else pointed out was the constant camera shake. I think it works nice to excentuate a particular element, but to have it constant makes it loose its effectivness.

I can't believe that they didn't want to invest any money into that video, considering the cost of the cars and jewelry that they were sporting.
 
I remember watching the first short clip of this that you posted, and I already really liked it! I thought it was made really well, even for the first 40 something seconds. What happened with Sony? This was the video that Sony saw, right? This video was pretty creative for the budget you had! I liked it a lot, and I think it's awesome that you want to start a movement for new rap videos. I saw your greenbench valentines day thing, it was pretty awesome too! You def put a lot of work into your videos and it shows!
I liked the "shaking" effect, because I think that rap videos need all those crazy effects! I liked the split images, etc, it was really good. Thanks for posting this dwnsthballer, continue to post hip hop videos, and urban stuff, I love it.
 
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