How To Produce Music Videos

To begin I am not a professional when it comes to anything electronic, that being said this hub is for compu-tech, his birthday hubs sparks a fire in me, and gave me this idea to create a hub on music video productions. I was sitting there rocking away to Love Will Keep Us Together--And I thought this is pretty cool!

So if I make a mistake please forgive me if one of the steps is out of order.

Now, lets get started, and by the way this subject is way out of my comfort zone, but I had a blast putting this together.

1. Camcorder and Blank Video Tape
2. Camcorder Operator
3. Lighting
4. Earphone Jack
5. Treatment of Video
6. Story Concept
7. Details/Props
8. Final Viewpoint
9. Shot List

You'll be better off buying a DV 

(Digital Video) camera, 

they're best for digital 

editing, later on. 

Decent DV cameras go for 

anything between $400 and $1200, 

and the tapes are around $

8 a piece. One camera that I have 

used personally is the 

Canon GL2 MiniDV Digital Camcorder. 

There are preset settings for the 

novice user, like myself and at 

the same time it was very fine 

tuneable, for the experts out 

there.  Make sure that your camera

 will shoot in progressive 

scan mode. Progressive scan 

is a particular method for 

displaying images, 

in which the lines of each 

frame are drawn in sequence. 

This will reduce the amount 

of flickering and increases 

resolution of the video you a

recording. Most cameras 

come with microphones attached 

to them, but you probably 

don't want to use the audio 

that will be recorded by the 

on-board mic as it will be 

pretty low quality. 

I suggest picking up a 

minidisc recorder, 

run all your instruments 

into a mixer that is plugged 

into said mindisc recorder.

Shooting - You can shoot your video anywhere, and 

hopefully you will take advantage of that fact! 

When editing your video, you will be telling a story. 

So varied locations would be excellent. If you can, 

storyboard your video out before you begin scouting 

locations or shooting. It makes thing 1,000,000 times 

easier, trust me. One other thing I would recommend 

would be to make sure that you have adequate lighting. 

Normal indoor lighting is not picked up by the camera 

he same way your eye picks it up. I would suggest picking 

up a book about the basics of video lighting, if you can. 

But if that is not a possibility, remember one thing,

more is better.

You're going to need to pull your video footage off of your 

camera onto your computer. Most DV cameras come with a USB cord

which will allow you to do just that. You can use the proprietary 

software that comes with your computer to do that, or you can buy 

editing software which will do the same thing. Most PCs that have 

Window XP installed come with Windows Movie Maker.

 This is a great program for beginners, 

it allows you to pull footage off of your camera, and then 

edit said footage. But it doesn't come with very many 

editing features. So the more advanced editors might 

want to plunk down some cash and buy Adobe Premiere, 

which is a super flexible video editing program with a 

very steep learning curve. The advanced Mac users out there 

might want to check out Final Cut Pro. Now that you have 

your edited footage, you'll want to output it onto tape

 or disc. The easiest thing to do is to burn it to DVD, 

which most editing programs will have a feature to do this. 

Once you have your video on DVD, the possibilities are 

limitless! 

Planning to make a music video, is similar to preparing to shoot a film. Think of it this way. It's a story being song to music. Thats your storyboard. You really should make your storyboard first, you will do your shooting according to the storyboard.

You can also look at the storyboard as your roadmap, telling where you are going next. This way you will stay on track with your shooting.

Just in case no one could tell I am a big Cher fan.

I honestly believe the decade from the 50's up to the 90's produce some of the best songs. I don't know what happen after 99. I won't comment but I guess hip hop took over. I will leave it at that.

My vision is to one day have a full recording studio in my home, I currently broadcast two programs, nothing big, but I do get a kick out of it, and do dream of expanding.

When it comes to producing, and making video I still claim to be a novice, and I am, but want to learn all there is to know in regard to producing. I remember the first time I was inside a studio--boy, I was scaried as heck looking at all the equipment.

I think it scare me sometime because the world of technology moves at such a fast pace, with upgrades, and the new and better being developed at lighting speed.

My gosh even wireless is being pushed aside with a new gadget for laptops.