hip hop / rnb videos

[Peter_Gaudry]

I may as well sling this one here as I'm sure it would have gotten moved from the 'frame grabs' section.

Anyways, I'm about to shoot a rap video, and in watching BET and MTV, I've come to the conclustion that most hip hop / rnb videos these days all have a certain look. There seems to be a lot of brightness, high reflections (is that the bling bling thing), occaisional use of high shutter speeds, and a certain look that just seems to be very high detail/sharpness.

So as you can see I'm fishing. I want my clip to look like these current clips, but I'm not sure what techniques to use. I'm not shooting on film obviously, but what tricks can I use to emulate the look I described? Powerful lights, tricks in FCP in post? A sharpness filter?

Any advice?

 

[theos]

Re: hip hop / rnb videos

So . . . hot chicks, silver bright reflective tight and small outfits, lotsa jewelery to flash around and a spray bottle to keep em wet . . . the rest is detail . . . and btw a convertable 7' wide car with white interiors always helps.

Just joking . . . the R&B videos look very cool but I think that the women do get too much of those extreme fish eye close ups. It must be a culture thing :

 

[DVX100Shooter]

Re: hip hop / rnb videos

Its not even about the bling bling all the time...I just got word today that I am going to be shooting and directing a video for a rapper and he wants it to be very "street" meaning the opposite of bling bling and booty shakin females....don't get me wrong those are some fine females in some of those videos!

As for your question its has to do with a lot of different elements. Let's come to the conclusion that you will NOT get the same look on your DVX that you would see in a video that cost them several hundred thousand dollars to make. Along with lights, comes the film stock, the camera, the lenses and then the whole color correction process in post.

I am sure you can play around with the settings in the camera and with proper lighting you can produce a really nice look but it won't be no Director Hype Williams type of look. You might want to look into plugins from either Magic Bullett or Digital Film Tools. They both have some valuable tools to help enhance the look of your project.

There is a video in the screen grabs section on I think page 16 posted by Rob called NEW VIDEO. All 3 of his videos were shot with a stock DVX100 no anamorphic lens and in 24p mode of course. Now he may have played around with the settings because some of the shots, the colors were very saturated very much like something youd see in a video on Mtv or BET.

Speaking of BET, anybody should be able to get their videos played on there! If your up late at night at around 3am check out their show called BET UNCUT. Some of the videos are mainstream artist and then there are some "Busted" looking videos from some no name people! BUT they are getting air play on BET though.