Check out my first music video

[chessmasterscds]

Hi, It's being almost 3 years since I don't post here, I got really busy shoting weddings and stuff.

Last January, I shot my first music video (christian hip-Hop theme). I was recommended to this guy and because it was going to be my first music video I charged him $650 bucks. I wanted to know how my DVX100B would behave on this kind of situations never tried before by me.

I wasn't happy enough with the results, but I knew it was going to be like this anyway, I used some lighting, I used my steadipod, my PAG Orbitor and my DVX100B. I also rented one of those heavy machine booms to make high shoots, and a power generator to move light around while shoting. I was the camera man, I used three guys to hold lights, another on the generator and one photographer just in case... It was 2 full days of shooting. No filters were used, so the sky looks plain white in almost every shot.

Anyways, here's the link:

http://produccionesm-m.com/producciones/music_unete/charly.html

everything is in spanish, 'cause that's my primary audience....
Do you think this video was worth the $650 bucks??? should I have charged more?? or less?? how much do you think is worth??

Also check out the trailer of a Reality show we shot from February to July this year. here's the link:

http://produccionesm-m.com/producciones/xv_erisbely_trlr/trailer.html

Tell me what you think of any of those 2 shorts.... what's good, what's bad, what can be improved and how.... what equipment do you recommend me or editing techniques. I shot everything using 24p by the way.

 

[TomGruber]

If this is really the first music video you've ever done, I think you did a pretty awesome job. The video compression probably doesn't do your DVX justice. You should upload a better quality copy to Vimeo or something.

Your compositions looked good. You had a decent amount of variation going on which prevented it from getting repetitive.

First music videos are tough, especially if it's a live performance piece that requires synced music. In my opinion, $650 isn't bad for a first-time m.v. production if that was on top of expenses. I think I ended up making only $400 on my first music video.

I have never done reality-tv work, so I can't really comment on that one.

How long did it take you to edit the music vid?

 

[chessmasterscds]

Hey!, I'm sorry for the delay, I got stuck dealing with some viruses bouncing from one workstation to another...
This was my first music video.... This guy came to me to show me his music and a couple days later I presented some ideas to him and this is the one he liked the most.

The editing took about a week and half, I did a rough cut at first without any filters just to see how the scenes would be ordered at the end. Then I had to model the white Dove that appears during the video in 3ds Max, I made a simple animation and then I composite them together being very careful to make them match properly.

I also made the glowing effect that comes out of the letters in 3ds Max. That was a very tough work to do because I had to animate frame by frame to make it look realistic.

Besides that, everything else was pretty straight forward, adding filters, color correction, playing around with different scenes... etc...

I had a total of 46 Final Render Tests, from which me and my friends discarded the first 40 ones. Then my client made some modifications to the last 5 ones making the 46th the Final one.

it was about 3 days of planning, 2 days and a half of filming, and about a week and a half of post-production work.

And yes, the compression on the video is really bad... The main reason for that is that we have very slow internet connection around here and i can barely upload at 15Kb/s. So I make the FLV files very small so I don;t have to wait all day to upload them to the servers.


Speaking of the Reality show.... This is not a show for TV.... this is a project I was hired to do for a girl that was about to turn 15 years old. This is part of their "Quinceañera" event video...., The party was on July the 4th. and the editing work is still in progress. The trailer is all I have finished by now. It is supposed to be delivered to my client on mid-November this year.