Music Video Scripts And Tips

Today we had a lesson on Music Video Scripts!

We began the lesson and first looked at a few videos on filming tips and tricks; we first looked further into shutter speed and frame rate, both, I have made previous blogs on, they can be found under General Research near the bottom of the blog sections guide on the right-hand side of the main blog page.

In short, we have been told to shoot our music video in either 4k 25p or 1080p 25p, I will attempt to shoot in 4K, but I will need to upscale any slow-motion footage if I need to shoot in 50fps as my camera is not able to shoot 4k 50p. Also, I believe my group want to edit on the college MAC’s, and I know they're not powerful enough to handle 4K footage, so I guess I'll stick to 1080P for this project rather than take a risk and shoot in 4K.

Rather than go on about camera settings all day though we also discussed five tips for making better music videos – video linked below

5 Tips For Making BETTER Music Videos!!!

After watching the video and having class discussions about each of the tips that were mentioned here is my summary of all of them:

Location

The locations you choose when planning to film your music video are essential; this is what I have learned from TheBuffNerds YouTube video. I have discovered that you do need to plan out where you want to film when thinking of the ideas for the video. To get specific locations you may need to go on to websites like Airbnb. They also mention in the video to carefully consider each shot in the place you have chosen, a small amount of graffiti may ruin everything.

Camera stability and movement

When TheBuffNerds moved on to talking about camera stability and movement they mentioned that there are good times and a bad time for each type of movement. For example, when filming a languid love song with lots of beautiful shots, you don’t want shaky camera footage whereas, if you were shooting a fight scene a bit of movement would be suitable for the style of scene. I enjoyed watching this segment of the video as I love to film all my footage as smooth as possible and it was nice to learn a bit more as to why and when you would use handheld footage when shooting.

Frame rate and shutter angle/speed

After this, the next segment in the video was frame rate and shutter speed, which I have talked about in the second paragraph of this blog.

Angles or coverage

The next topic was angles and coverage when shooting, rather than have one wide shot. For example, this would be boring as there would be no real meaning to the video, whereas if you're filming a band. For example, it’s a good idea to get them to perform their song/performance multiple times, and each time they perform to get a different angle, for example, the first time they could capture the wide shots. Then the second they could get close-ups of the performer/performers, then the next time get close-ups of the instruments being played, like a close of a guitar or the drums.

Colour correction

In TheBuffNerds video they state that colour correction is essential when it comes to editing a music video and that it can make or break the final product if the colours look bland and it is a lively song, this wouldn’t make any sense. You need to edit to the style of the song for example for a pop song you may want to increase the saturation for the music video and boost brightness. Whereas in a timepiece song like ours we may want to add a warm tone over the top of our video and increase contrast, this would help people understand this is a timepiece whereas if we just booted the saturation and made our video colourful and modern, it would not fit Pink Floyd’s style.

In conclusion, I have learnt a few more things about filming from this video, and I did find it quite useful. Some of the skills that were shared in it, like colour correction, of which I am not that good at, so it was good to hear some tips on how to do it correctly!

Finally, we watched a video on how to write a script for a music video, fortunately for us we are not filming a performance, instead a short film (narrative), but, I was still taking notes just in case I wanted to make a performance music video in the future or if we suddenly change our mind with our current idea.

We were asked to make a script of our own and write up the first 30 seconds of it, but I did 35 seconds just because I had time for it and the song I had selected was quite slow at the beginning.

Below is the music video that I have written my script from:

John Newman - Love Me Again (Official Music Video)

Below is the music video script I made for John Newman’s song 'Love Me Again'

In conclusion to the whole lesson I have learnt a lot of tips and tricks that will benefit me in the future to come, I especially enjoyed watching a Five Tips video from TheBuffNerds, and I have subscribed to them on YouTube to see more of their educational content!