$700US music video shot on HVX200

Holy crap! Hey Joe, I thought your name sounded awfully familiar! Yes I do remember you from the shoot, was wondering where you vanished to actually :) That was awesome of you to give us a hand that day, the video turned out pretty well. I think the more distance I get from it, the more I actually enjoy it! :)

What're you doing these days?
 
I had to go back and finish cutting whatever i was doing that day in the edit suite we had based in the Park.

Freelancing at the moment, still working rugby in the weekends so see andy once and awhile, assistant editing on a few things and then shooting a lot of P2 for MTV nz.

Currently looking for more Drama assisting work, just finished up working on Underworld 3 in Editorial as an assist, definitely keen for more feature work..
 
Underworld 3 - bitchin', that would've been a very interesting gig I'm sure! That sounds excellent!

Yeah I'm currently mostly doing editing and not much directing either, so trying hard to circumnavigate that usual obstacle myself.

Stay in touch dude and let me know how you get on and I'll do the same. Will say hi to Andy for ya!
 
Sorry i been out of the loop for a few days WOW, that some of the best speed ramping i ever seen, the sync was excellant the cello was outstanding :), poe your post/production is kick ass, i just love how polished it i :) We are a seporate post house, the students use Sony A1p Z1 and EX1's i think the p2 road is still a bit steap but i can't stand HDV so i cretianly wasn't going to take our team down that road. That Vid is pure :)
 
Awesome!

These are some of the most intense grabs I've viewed here on DVXuser.

The candles look particularly nice.

-Andrew

poe said:
Hi guys

The finished footage was graded using the Nattress Plugins set on Final Cut Pro 2.

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Thanks again Phantom - glad that you are not bogged down by the slothfest that is HDV codec!

And thanks to you too BikeFilms - that's very kind of you to say. Makes me feel better about the footage, which certainly isn't 100% what I wanted or hoped for initially.
 
I thought it was quite nice for $700, I mean sheesh, let's be honest, that's basically no budget. There were elements I thought could be improved upon but I just think to some extent it's silly to complain too much about something done very low budget under less-than-ideal conditions.

I know I'm probably more critical of my own work usually than anyone else could be, because I'm the first to see its imperfections and become annoyed that something didn't work out better when I really thought it would.

Sometimes, though, you do what you can with the budget you have, or the equipment and talent that you have. I know for me, if a band offered me $5,000 to make them a music video, I'd do it, but the way I want to make professional quality projects I would probably not have any money left over to pay myself or for my equipment, and even then there are corners that would have to be cut.

This video I'm shooting next Sunday is fairly high budget for an indie video and yet we still can't afford a production designer or art director. I'm actually the director and the art director, which is kind of sad because I know about as much about that as anyone else who has seen movies and studied them, i.e. no professional or amateur experience. But at the same time I know what I want to see and our locations are decently production designed already, all of the major stuff is there, so I'm able to just say, "Alright this is an office scene, we need file folders on the table, a computer, maybe some other misc. items," etc. But it was the one area of the video I felt we could skimp out on a bit because the rest of the money went to lighting, a talented crew, a nice location, etc.

One thing that always cracks me up is, I guess, the use of the word "budget" in relationship to "this video cost X amount." I'm not sure how to put that, but basically what I mean is when someone says, "Well my buddy Jay had the HVX200 and all of this killer equipment and lights and a dolly and (blah blah etc.) and my friends had some great locations, and I got together some professionals who are my cousin, my uncle, and two of my film school student friends, and my aunt May made us all food, so we shot the whole video for $200!" That's totally awesome, don't get me wrong, using your resources is a HUGE part of low budget filmmaking and to be commended. But I'm always a bit more curious what a video should have cost, regardless of what it did. In other words, if the director's time wasn't billed, it was completely free, what would he have made even just being fair and saying his time is worth a pitiful $10/hr. What would the equipment costs have been (reasonably) if nothing was free. What would similar locations rent for, etc. Then again, I'm thinking like a producer. As filmmakers, you want to say how much you did for so little money. I'm like that too when I'm actually making a project myself. But as a producer I have to explain to clients why something costs so much, so I don't care what it did cost I care about the cost to replicate the results, in other words. Heck we filmed a music video with fire, somewhat insufficient power needs, no permits, no safety officers, no extra insurance, all kinds of shortcuts, etc. and spent $2,500 on the shoot. But if someone asks what a video "like that" costs I'm going to be honest and tell them we can't do that for less than $20,000. That's because I know every time you work with fire and want a permit and need to pay for all of the things I listed above, it's going to cost a lot of money to go legit and that's how I want to film now. Guerilla stuff is fun but I'd like to avoid getting busted if possible ;)

In a roundabout way, poe, what I'm saying is please don't go tell the clients that you did that nice piece of work for $700 because then we really will have trouble explaining to them how a basic performance video can't be done for less than $5,000 (as a production company, not as an individual doing it all). Haha! ;)
 
Hey Jonathan,

if it makes your feel any better - $5000US is the standard expected budget for a music video in New Zealand. If you get a video with anything more than $10,000US, you know its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So yeah a lot of people here in NZ work on what we call "video-rates". The reasoning is obvious and people work on video rates because music videos still offer the chance to be creative and play in different ways and its only one or two days out of your life for the chance to be part of something potentially cool - especially if you like the artist or band involved.

And in video rates, who actually gets paid actual money changes from gig to gig. Myself, my producer and my actors have never yet been paid for a single music video (though we did pay a couple of models for their time).

In all of our videos we've had a professional production designer involved, but sadly we could only hand her between $50-$150US for her time. She gladly took the job anyways because she was allowed to express herself in more abstract ways and she felt it would be great for her portfolio, but I do hear you and I know what you mean - getting music video crew is a nightmare at the best of times.

The thing with budget though is basically what you have to start with - which is something a lot of clients don't understand and respect that budget does not equal end product. Even in moderate budget feature films, freebies and borrowed gear and one-off favours still occur, so its dangerous (in my humble opinion) to quibble over whether that is included in budget or not.

In terms of the "My Kingdom Falls" video, the $700US was used to pay for camera rental, DOP, wardrobe, makeup, art director, 1 x female model and for procuring "bartering goods" for a lighting/grip truck (not going into that here, but some of you know how it goes). The location, director, producer, 2 x actors, production manager and 2 x untrained lighting grips were free. The band provided the chow for the day.

So to be sure - the video was produced thanks to people working for "video rates", being excited about the project and basically making the budget stretch creatively. Naturally you can't do this all of the time, but here in New Zealand this is the status quo - so pressure is on the creative team to come up with a video concept that's exciting enough to attract attention. And that attention can pay off - the steadicam operator who shot the "My Favourite Thought" video for me got a job working on Jane Campion's new film in England after Jane watched the music video on his reel and was totally impressed by it!

And yes - I totally agree with you - when you have clients who CAN spend $40K on a music video, then by all means you must must must upsell your video at its actual potential worth rather than what it cost on the day (unless you want to show them how good you are at getting maximum production value out of little budget).

And don't worry - mum's the word :)
 
PPS - quick calculations makes me believe that "My Kingdom Falls" - at regular rates - would have cost us about $15,000-$18,000US to make if everyone was paid and all gear was paid for.
 
PPPS - of course, if we DID have $18,000US to make this video, the video would have looked COMPLETELY different of course ;-)

Ironic, isn't it?
 
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