In this article, I will reveal to you how to shoot a perfect music video.
To shoot a perfect music video, you must ensure that you have all the necessary video clips you are going to use in post-production to really make the music video colorful and stand out.
Even if you are shooting your entire music video in just one location with the artist wearing one customer, so long as you have all the necessary video clips or footage, you are going to shoot a perfect music video.
Let’s not waste much time but dive straight into this article.
How to shoot a perfect music video.
To shoot a perfect music video, you must have the following video clips or footage:
- Primary performance
- Primary performance B-Roll
- Primary narrative B-Roll.
- Secondary performance
- Secondary performance B-Roll.
- Cutaways.
1. Primary performance
The primary performance consists of the artist performing his or her song at the main location. This performance is going to really increase the rest of your video clips or footage.
2. Primary performance B-Roll
Primary performance B-Roll is basically the same thing as the main primary performance, the only difference is that the artists are going to be at the same location but they are not singing any lyrics.
They could just be posing, moving their arms, closing their eyes, etc. And this footage is usually shot at a high frame rate so you can slow it down in post-production.
The best way to capture this footage is usually at the last take of your primary performance shot.
Just tell your artist not to speak or sing but rather to pose and move during the chorus of your last take.
The reason you must do this is that at this point, you need another additional footage that is being sung because choruses and verses are the same regardless of the take that you are doing.
3. Primary narrative B-Roll.
This footage usually avoids the lyrics being made but it really tells the story of the music video.
It consists of small things like a guy entering a party, showing the ping pong table where people are playing, showing a guy noticing a girl, and going over to flirt with her.
The little things that really forward the narrative of your music video.
It also includes aerial (drone) shots that help to establish the location or scene in the song intro.
N/B: Shoot this footage in a high frame rate so you can slow it down during post-production to have what we popularly call “slow motion”.
4. Secondary performance
Secondary performance is usually a performance shot at a secondary location.
This will give you something different to get into within any verse or chorus segment that you are in.
This secondary location usually matches similar beaming (rolling of the camera) to the primary location, but it still has a lot of attributes that are distinctly different.
For example, you can have primary footage of an artist standing on a balcony singing to a girl while you can take secondary footage of the artist sitting and singing on a staircase.
N/B: keep the camera rolling in all these shots.
5. Secondary B-Roll.
This is exactly like the secondary performance shot except that the lyrics are not being sung.
The artist is in the same location but just kind of moving, vibing, and doing anything but not actually singing the lyrics.
6. Cutaways.
This footage does not have any true significance to the narrative of the story but it will really add to the vibe of the video.
These are close shots of body parts, jewelry, clothing, brand ambiance, and anything you can use in quick succession to really add visual complexity to make your project look special.
Conclusion.
All these 6 types of music video footage we discuss in this article must be broken up into their individual wide shot, medium shots, and close-up shots.
