Me and my musician friend were discussing about making a music video for one of his new songs. Both of us are independent artistes with our bread-winning professions being other than music. He shared with me some reference music-videos and asked me my take about how to go about it. I told him about the same from the perspective of someone who has seen various music-videos and can handle a small camera and edit some simple stuff. It was a nice conversation.. I felt like sharing some excerpts here ..may be you will like it 🙂
So here we go with the gyaan 🙂 …
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What I’ve seen and learnt so far – there are various ways in which songs-videos are made.
(A) The videos u’ve sent are like very nicely edited and have some decent effects. The technique here is to cut in such a manner that the scene-changes and the effects and transitions happen as per the beat. And this is what charms the audience.
(B) Then there are videos in which the scene exactly illustrates the lyrics e.g. u say Masti in the song and you show youngsters having fun.. u say Taj Mahal and u show Taj Mahal – Illustrative Videos. These illustrations could be indirect and poetic also in which there is an analogy between the scene and the lyrics e.g. showing sunrise when talking of hope. These have simpler effects and cuts and can be beautified using some color correction etc. E.g. if the song is about past history or travel etc and shows some monuments of Delhi.. you could give a slightly brass kind of feel..little bit like Sepia and it enhances the quality. (This applies to other types of videos as well).
(C) You could also have people dancing to the song, with the video capturing the various dance moves and expressions from various angles and magnifications. This should also be cut to the beat precisely. Also, you need to capture the movements from various angles simultaneously..to do a nice job.
(D) Another style is Abstract : You add jerky cuts, stop motion, things like sprinkling of water droplets in ultra slow motion..and things like this. ..but the content on the scene is not even remotely associated with the lyrics. This is more like modern art. You show a woman sitting on a Sand-dune, camera 360 degrees, moon and sun together in the sky, she is wearing an FTV kind of impossible dress with a blank expression on the face, flowers blooming in slow-motion from the sand… and so on. These are usually eye-catchers and the sound is awsumly produced mostly. The video tries to complement the sounds with these out of the world scenes.
(E) Another one is simple but deep style of videos. In these the song as well as the video together make a story. There seldom are any fancy cuts and effects in this but the action that is happening on the view is so intense and meditative that you would never want an effect to disturb you. This is many times used in documentary film making and very effective esp for Independent Film Makers and musicians. One such example is given below.
The Creation of Singing Bowls (5 min 51 sec): http://vimeo.com/22202779
Now, plz note, these are all my inferences as a common man who is an observer and an Independent Artist. These points may be very wrong when you compare to lessons from any film making book 🙂 But, art is never learnt from a book I feel… it comes from within and all of us define our own style 🙂 So I just shared my views with you.
Ok now done with the disclaimer !! Let’s proceed..
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And then the discussions were about the new project and how to do it and all. Will keep you posted about how it proceeds finally but hope you liked the post. It’s so casual and so “not-read-from-a-book”..and lacks technical terms also…but still I just felt like sharing it here 🙂
Thanks for your time.
God bless us all. Cheers !!
Jashn Hai Zindagi 
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