Music Video

Music Video

  • Total voters
    3
N

NYDEUCES

Member
I made this music video as a Senior Project. The whole video was mainly directed by me, but I had a lot of peopling wanting to use the camera so this isn't my best work. Also, I was working with school cameras :( Let me know what you guys think, all feedback is welcome. Also, I am getting a T2i today, and a bunch of video accessories for it so I will start making more serious films and music videos.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Also, please visit my website here: LINK

If you guys could subscribe to me on YouTube and add me as a friend please do: YouTube
 
OK, so I'm going to respond to this, despite the fact that it's very much posted in the wrong forum. Some background on me so you know where I'm coming from: I'm relatively new to videography and only shoot documentaries, but I've been writing, producing, and performing hip-hop music for over a decade and have released several albums (the latest of which is called "Roads on the Earth" and you can buy on iTunes :). So I do know this subject pretty well.

The opening is weak, I think. There doesn't seem to be any reason for this to be in black and white, and the "here is the rapper recording the song" thing has been done a billion times. It's fun to show off your nice equipment, professional mic, and soundproofing, but regular people don't care about that. This ISN'T a documentary, after all, so your goal is not to capture the process of making the song, it's to capture the feeling of the song with video that represents it.

After the black/white opening, the video is hit or miss, I think. There are some nice shots (the gold background shot at 0:31 is nice, I wish you'd used that background more, graffiti background is nice if a little cliche), but there's nothing that makes it really stand out from a video perspective, and a couple big weak points:

-the color keeps changing from full color to black white or highly desaturated looks. Why? It's OK to do that, but you need a better reason than "it looks cool". If there was a reason, I couldn't figure it out.

-we never get a great sense of the environment our rapper is in, or what any of it really has to do with the song. Is he in a suburban green area? In a car? Chilling by the pool? In a very urban looking graffiti area? Of course he can be all of those places, but it's weird to just switch randomly between these shots with no real context. I get the impression he's a pretty regular suburban kid, but at points in this video, you seem to be trying to pull off "fly rich dude" and "street-smart urban dude" too. Pick one. Even if he's all of those things, pick one for this song, because otherwise the video reads sort of like a list of rap cliches. (and speaking of cliches, if you're going to do the "baller chilling in the pool" shot you have got to have some ladies present. Otherwise it looks lonely and weird. You do have some later but in the first shot of the pool it's just some random dude floating alone. Sad. Give us an establishing shot first. And why the weird color? It makes this look like the most boring, depressing pool party ever).

-lighting! A lot of what makes a "pro" music video is the lighting. There are some good shots (again, I like that gold background shot, though some people probably don't), but in a lot of them your main performer doesn't pop and in some cases his face has shadows on it. He is the star, and the light should be drawing our attention to him (rather than his boys or the background) in any given shot. For example, freeze frame at 1:15 or 1:20 -- the background "pops" and the performer's face is obscured by shadow. There are also a couple shots that just look really amateurish, like the one around :58...the whole image is kind of blown out and the color of the trees looks much better than the color of your performer, who is weirdly kind of blue (white balance issues?).

- rap music is active and rhythmic, so MOVE THE CAMERA! who says you have to be glued to one spot? It makes the video static and boring if every shot is on a tripod.

-BY FAR the biggest problem: your actors. The main performer is obviously not totally comfortable and it shows here. Look at how he's holding his hands in the end of the video, it's very awkward. There are two approaches to this; either be totally "cool" and don't really move at all (HARD to sell) or go all out and put some emotion into the hand movements and "dancing". Anything between the two looks half-assed on camera, even if it's totally normal in real life. To put it in a recording context, it's very similar to how you generally have to over-emote while recording a track to get the proper effect in the final record. The same is true of almost everyone else in the video, everyone seems a little uncomfortable and afraid to really go all out and sell what they're doing. There are lots of nervous looks, and awkwardly unnatural movements, even in the people who are basically standing still (which just makes it look like they're kind of bored by the song).

I watched almost all of it because the beat is nice (the rapper has some talent, although the lyrics are pretty generic and I don't remember a single word right now, even though I just watched the whole thing twice). But if the beat had been wack, I wouldn't have watched it.

Yes, there are lots of videos that just show rappers "chilling" and make their lives look cool. However, those videos are boring as f*ck (most of them) and they were made with WAY higher budgets than what you've got, so that everything looks perfect. You probably don't have the money or equipment to pull that off, so where you can stand out is mostly in your concept. Be creative! This video is boring because I have seen everything in it a million times before, shot by more experienced directors with better cameras, professional lights, and skilled confident performers. If you're going to catch the viewers attention, you need to do it through creativity, and I don't mean turn the camera upside down or shoot it entirely in dutch angles, I mean CONCEPT.

Sit down with the artist before the shoot and listen to the song. What is there that would be interesting to see on video? Don't worry about matching up with the lyrics too well; most people won't notice that anyway. Look at some of the best rap videos of all time, and you'll see they win on creativity, not on following the lyrics of the song to the letter (see "California Love" for a great example). What's more important is capturing the VIBE of the song in your video.

So, this song is called "elevator musik". It's a chilled-out, almost bemused sounding song. One idea would be to have your performer actually in some elevators, surprising people who get in by performing the song or whatever. That is a ridiculous and corny idea, sure, but I'm just trying to make a point, which is, there should be a concept to the video beyond "here is the guy rapping in some interesting places."

Here's an interesting contrast for you. Check out this video by Blu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia0VxX1y-1M It's a similar song in tone and lyrics, and the video is similar to yours, trying to show everyday life. But it's much more convincingly done. The camera is more active, the cuts are quicker, the performer is WAY more confident (and notice how he's always DOING something in the video, this helps eliminate nervous awkward movements). The story is simple (and he's got the "here's my recording studio" thing I told you not to do, kind of) but there IS a story. He gets up, puts on clothes, goes outside, gets in a car, hooks up with some friends and ladies. These people all look comfortable and confident, and I believe they're friends (even though they may not really be). Even though nothing really happens and there's no conflict at all, having a "story" in that there's a sense of TIME and PROGRESS makes the video easier to follow and understand. It also helps the viewer connect with the performer.

Anyway, there's a book for you. Tell your man he's got a pretty decent flow, but his lyrics are generic. (Of course so are most rappers', including lots of famous ones, so maybe that's what he's going for). What REALLY separates him from any of those other dudes (aside from the fact no one has heard of him?). Write songs honest, from the heart, don't write what people want to hear. Maybe that's what this song is and he's just a pretty regular dude. But I bet there's more there, and I'd like to hear something more interesting than "I chill, I smoke weed, I own Jordans."
 
Hey, thank you for the constructive criticism, definitely going to use it for future reference. However, we had to show "the making of" somehow in the video. That is why in the beginning we showed the studio and the rapper in the booth. We were behind on shooting because the music took a while to master, so we had to get shots together really quick because it was going to rain that day. We were also low on video equipment and even cameras. We decided that 2 people would head to the school, grab a camera and shoot some scenes in a different area other than the house we were at. They thought the graffiti was cool, than I just edited it to make it look more glowing. We tried to put together the song with visuals...for example when he said "chilling by the pool", we got a shot of the pool, than when he said "Jordan's on my feet" we got a shot of the Jordan's.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top