Music Video

Donald Harvey

Donald Harvey

Active member
I am going to be shooting a Music Video here soon and well the singer(s) is not what you usually would expect.

A friend on the College Hockey team has presented to me a battle between 2 college HOCKEY teams for a RAP video. On who can make the best RAP video. I have nothing wrong with rap nor hockey players, I listen to a bit of rap, and play lots of hockey. I just thought that this battle is pretty funny...

So if someone could help me with the basics of "how to shoot" a music video that would be great. I know I might be asking a pretty broad question, so Thanks alot for trying to help me out!
 
I'm still working on my educational "Making Indie Music Videos" project, lol, but I can't wait to have my DVD out for this reason.

I'll help however I can in short, but I have such a long script written for that video project and so much potential advice I can't really give much more than a little bit in a post because it'd take forever.

The most important point I think is to get a lot of takes. This may be less necessary in a rap video, I am not sure, I usually deal with rock bands, but it's great to have lots of footage and coverage. With rock videos I aim for 12 to 20 takes in general, but with a single rapper, I don't see why you'd need that many. I would say that you'd be ok with more like 8 takes from different angles, depending on what you're going for. I know a lot of rap artists like those "rap looking down at the camera" angles, to make them look more imposing, plus they can look cool in general. Or maybe some parts lend themselves to that, other parts of the lyrics lend themselves to overhead shots looking down at him, like imagine "Sometimes I feel so strong" (shoot from below) "other times I feel so weak" (shoot from above), those types of cuts can make an impact in the way a video is shot and edited, etc. You always want to give yourself variety.

Also you have to figure out if there's going to be a story component, and if that story component is going to be part of the performance or completely separate from it. Sometimes it's a hybrid. My last video has a story that mainly book-ended the video, but it also had a story within the performance itself, for instance.

You should think a lot about how you'd like to cut the video together before you shoot. You always want a good shot list and have a good idea in your mind how it will all fit together. You don't have to know perfectly, but at least have a general idea.

Also I guess you have to decide how big or small the video production is, like if it's a one-man show, I've never done that before, but that changes what you can do versus a larger production.
 
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