How to Make a Music Video

Series Summary

Becoming an indie filmmaker is a more attainable dream now that ever before. Home technology allows ordinary folks to shoot a movie, edit it, lay down music for the background and even create a movie trailer. Now, selling the finished product involves a lot more. There are storyboards to draw, scripts to write and funding to obtain. The tricky part is getting a studio to notice. In this free video series on filmmaking, a writer, director and editor explains how to make film and write scripts. Get information on writing movie scripts, sitcom scripts and scripts for children. Learn about the history of movies and the history of movie sound. Find out how to light a film and how to become a television producer. Express your creativity as an independent filmmaker with help from these free videos.

Video Transcript

"All right folks, in this clip we're going to talk about how to make a music video. All right. So, obviously, first and foremost, you're going to need music. And by music I mean a band or a solo artist of some kind who is willing to let you be the director of their music video. So, find a friend, someone that you know that's in a band, or someone that's, you know, trying to get their singing career off the ground and volunteer your services. And, in this way, you know, they won't have to pay you because you'll be giving them a free music video and you won't have to pay them for their time because they're helping you gain experience. So, once you have the song and the band firmly in place, really, study the song structurally energy wise. What kind of emotions does it invoke? Really, just kind of develop in your mind a visual idea of how you want the song to play out as a video. That's the really important thing. Listen to the song over and over and over until you find the meat of the song, with the core and the thing that it really....the point when it stirs up something inside of you and inspires you on some level. If you can't find a song that inspires you, you should probably move on and try and find different material, just because this is very important, to be able to translate a song visually onto the screen. From there you're going to want to get a lot of coverage of the band, once it comes time to shoot you're going to want to shoot the band with the artist in a variety of different ways. From a variety of different angles. And try and get as creative and visually stimulating as possible with your shots. Don't be dry and boring. Try and think outside the box. If you're going to intertwine sort of a narrative story, make sure you treat this like a mini short film. Have an outline, a script, a shot list. Figure out exactly how you want it to play out from beginning to end. Bring all the components together in the editing room. Piece it together, try and match the energy of the song as you do that. And at the end of the day, if you've done everything right, you'll have your very own completed music video."