this week we're showing you how to make
music videos from the first step of
coming up with an idea all the way
through to adding the final touches in
post-production
[Music]
hello my name is simon cade and this is
dslr guide so over the summer i shot a
music video with my friend alicia
catling and i want to now use that as an
example to take you through the process
of making a music video but i do
recommend that you watch the video
itself first and that will really help
this video to make a lot more sense so
the first step is to listen to the song
now we thought that alicia's song
sounded a bit psychedelic but it also
had these kind of mournful undertones to
it so the image that popped into my head
when i was listening to it was of a bed
in an empty field and we then
constructed a simple story around the
idea of a bed in the field now i am
going to spoil the whole music video so
if you haven't seen it now is a good
time to see it but basically what
happens in the video is the initial
story is about someone who's planting a
seed only to find that the flower then
withers so the story outside of that is
that it takes place within the dreams of
a coma patient and at the end we see her
lie down in the dream and final shot
shows her heart rate reducing to a flat
line so you've probably heard of the
idea that filmmakers have these
metaphorical tools that they can use to
convey ideas and emotions so for example
when i was planning the shoot i decided
i wanted to have soft lighting and very
minimal camera movement which would kind
of reflect that stillness of someone
being in a coma and i also decided to
use plenty of wide shots to represent
her loneliness and then to show that it
was a dream i first had the kind of
unlikely image of a bed in a field but
then i also wanted to make it a bit more
clear so i thought i'd do some kind of
abstract overlays so these are things
that pop up on the screen and like
semi-transparent that don't really make
sense but help to show that it's you
know not just a normal thing that
they're in a dream world so by making
these decisions early on it makes it a
lot easier to have kind of consistency
throughout your tools so the idea is
that even if someone didn't understand
the story they would still pick up the
right vibe and the right emotions so
it's up to you to use the storytelling
devices of color lighting framing camera
movement and all the other ones
depending on what kind of vibe and what
kind of emotions and ideas you want to
convey so the next step is to storyboard
the video now i used a pen tablet and
the free software to kind of
roughly sketch out each of the shots and
i was thinking about things like where
the camera is going to be placed in
terms of the height of it and then also
the framing and i was also thinking
about things like screen direction so if
you don't know what the 180 degree rule
is then you should definitely google
that and then decide whether you want to
follow it or purposefully break it so i
then brought the images from my
storyboard into my editing software
along with the song and then i could
edit those shots along to the music
video and get a very good idea about
what kind of pacing i wanted how quick
the cuts would come and you know make
sure that i knew exactly how long each
shot needed to be so the key here is
that if you don't make these kind of
decisions before the shoot then you'll
find yourself making them when you're
actually on set and as much as possible
you just want to be focusing on getting
the shots and it makes it so much easier
when you can have that time beforehand
to really sit down and think about these
really important things such as you know
what kind of shots you're going to get
so as we built a very detailed plan we
started to look into locations so i went
down to one of the local kind of
wildlife park sort of things and i spoke
to the people in the office and they
were very happy to let us film there but
they did also tell us that the park is
very busy after 11am and since we wanted
it to be deserted we decided that we'd
then arrive at 7am so it's very
worthwhile to talk to them not only to
get permission but also to get some kind
of inside information about it so on the
day of the main shoot i got up at 5am
with the plan that we could be at the
location and fully set up by 8 am so i'm
really glad that we left that time
because it turned out that carrying all
of the gear and all of the props and
especially the bed was a real hassle and
it took a long time so i was very glad
that we had set aside time for that so
in terms of equipment i was shooting
with the canon t3i along with a tamron
17-50 millimeter f 2.8 vc lens and i
also brought plenty of reflectors and
stands for those reflectors and also of
course props and costumes and food and
drink but i'll do a full list of all the
equipment i used on the blog post so do
check that out if you're interested so
once we've built the bed i positioned it
thinking about the background that was
behind it and the angle of the camera
but also thinking about the lighting so
those are two things to consider when
you're setting up your set i suppose
so i shot pretty much completely with
natural light and because i wanted that
really soft lighting kind of look i
decided that we would be waiting until
the clouds came over so we were very
fortunate in that it was a cloudy day
but they were kind of going in and out
all the time so we're pretty much just
looking at the sky trying to guess when
the next bit of cloud cover was going to
come now we thought a lot about the
order of shooting things so for instance
because one of the priorities was having
a empty field that didn't have any trace
of civilization we decided to do all the
wide shots first because then even if
people arrived later on we could still
do the tighter shots the close-ups later
on even if there's people in the
background a bit so for the shots that
needed lip syncing along with the song
we just brought a small portable speaker
which could plug into a phone and then
i'd also asked her if she'd practice lip
syncing along with it for a couple days
beforehand because that way it saves a
lot of time on set because you could
pretty much nail it in one take so once
we'd got all the shots that we needed we
packed down and i quickly rushed home so
i could copy the footage and get it
backed up as soon as possible now the
other two shoots were a lot simpler they
pretty much didn't require much
equipment or they were very short shoots
so we just kind of turned up and got
those out of the way ticked off the
shots and it was very easy but the
interesting part was filming those kind
of inserts the overlays so i bought some
flowers for the shoot and i let them
wilt for a couple of weeks and then i
went out and filmed the overlays so
because i knew that i was going to
overlay it i just had to consider where
i was placing the flowers within the
frame so they didn't cover up anything
important but i also wanted some shots
with a kind of watery theme to them so i
set up a light behind the diffusion
panel and then i set up a glass of water
in front of it and i basically just
filmed that glass of water so i would
you know pour water into a cup and see
what that looked like had some cool
little bubbles that worked quite well
when i then overlaid them and then i
also stirred the water with a pen and
then dropped some food coloring into it
and that also made quite a cool pattern
which i ended up using quite a lot in
the video including in the credits at
the end of the video so i think it's
definitely worth trying out some stuff
with water and ink you can get some
really cool effects now sometimes a
little bit of resourcefulness goes a
long way so if you look at this shot
that i had of a hospital heart rate
monitor you see that and hopefully it
should look fairly believable but if i
zoom out then you can see it's just a
computer monitor on a stool with some
curtains clamped up to the regular
curtains that were there in my bedroom
and i'd set up my camera on a skateboard
dolly that i'd made ages ago so
hopefully no one noticed that it wasn't
an actual hospital room and as for the
graphics that were shown on the screen i
had to make those from scratch too so i
made some kind of elements that were
just images in and then i animated
them in motion five and made a kind of
looping video which i could then play on
that old computer monitor and i think it
worked out pretty well in the end well
that did take a long time to set up so
once you've filmed everything it's time
to start post-production so the first
step is to start bringing your clips
into your timeline so i was generally
following my storyboard but i was also
very open to new ideas and i'm going to
do a whole episode about editing but for
now i'll just say that editing is
basically the case of organizing your
shots in terms of the order but also the
speed of your cuts you know how fast is
the story going to unfold how many cuts
are you using do you want it to play out
really slow or do you want it to be you
know really fast paced so at our
location there were lots of benches
around which kind of defeated the whole
idea of it being a deserted field so
what i did is i would just make a in
layman's terms i basically took another
bit of forest and made a little patch
out of that by duplicating the clip and
you know drawing around it i made the
little patch and put it on top of the
bench and you know that was a fairly
simple thing to do but it did take a
while since i need to do it so often so
once the editing is finished and you've
done any visual effects that you might
need to do then you can do color
correction it does make sense to do it
in this order so that you're not color
correcting loads of shots that you're
not even going to use in the end but the
thing i did in general was just try and
match the shots as closely as possible
which did take a little bit of work
considering that the lighting was
changing and then i also
kind of went for an overall
idea of it starting off warm and then
getting cooler as it went down because
there's a kind of simple association
with warm being happy color and cooler
bluer colors being sad so that's very
basic but you know these sort of things
do work so i would say just think about
your colors try and match it if you if
you need to
now as i said we wanted it to have these
kind of abstract overlays the idea being
that would show that it was a dream so i
took the footage that i'd shot with the
water glass and the flowers and i did a
variety of blending modes by putting
them on top and changing the blending
mode to maybe screen or add and the idea
with these they're very simple kind of
mathematical things that make the black
parts of the image transparent and the
white bits show through all the brighter
bits show through or in the other way
you can have the dark bits show through
and the brighter bits not show through
so that's pretty much it so hopefully
seeing how we made our music video that
will help you to make some decisions
about how you want to make yours but of
course you don't have to follow what we
did at all you know especially with
music videos you especially open to be
able to just do whatever you want and be
as abstract or cinematic or just
generally crazy as you want but all that
remains is for me to remind you that you
can see the finished full music video
and the first link in the description
and also if you want to check out
alicia's music stuff she's over on
youtube facebook and soundcloud all of
those just slash alicia catling so hope
this has been a useful video and i'll
see you next time
[Music]