Question about how music videos are made?

[Stella Richards]

Hey guys,

I have a question abouthow music videos are made.

In music videos where it shows bands playing (greenscreen or not,) do they actually play the song and then dub the recorded version over it, or do they pretend to play and then dub the music over it?

One day when me and my band write a good song, I might want to make my own home-made music video for it.

[chrispenycate]

For commercial music videos (not predestined for you-Tube style) they take the record and play it out through a reasonably powerful sound system, while the band mimes/plays. Many times, for each change of decor/costume, and frequently onto several cameras simultaneously, as if they were filming a festival 'live'. Each tape/disc will have the sound on it, as a reference, and frequently the timecode tracks are synchronised for one 'take'.

Then you drag everything back to the studio and de-rush it, making DVDs for the producer, director and frequently the band, of everything, bad takes, waiting for the tape to roll, everything.

The useful material is (nowadays) loaded onto the computer hard disc, in broadcast quality, and edited onto a mixed copy of the song. It's possible the song will be remixed to fit the video, but this comes after, along with any sound effects or the like added. occasionally, microphones have been plugged into camcorders during the shoot, for dramatic effects, but this is rare. Video effects are added, generally in low definition at this point, to be rendered later, and, when lip sync is vital, it's adjusted here (many hours of rendering will follow, but the computer hardly needs overseeing at this point, at most a technician). Colour recalibrating (I don't care how carefully you did your white balance before the shoot, it always needs retouching) Chromakey, size formatting can all be done at this point, or at the beginning while preparing the list of clips.

Even if the final product is intended for the web, every stage is done in the highest quality possible, compression applied at the final stage. Then more DVDs are made of the proposed edit; everyone takes one home, to compare with other professional product and suggest ways in which it can be improved. Anyone who is not involved in paying studio time will have lots of these suggestions; it's now you learn that the original storyboard/shooting script was not understood by those who signed off on it, and it is quite standard to go out, with one camera and the original costumes, to shoot extra footage, to be edited into the final version. End credits and titles are added (you definitely don't want to do that before the edit is finalised) and the mandatory spelling mistakes corrected, and if there is audio post production to be done, like remixing the song in 5.1 for HD, it's now. backups of all phases of the production (without titles, with video effects, each stage) are made, labelled and archived. Now you can apply data reduction and put the thing on your website, or burn it onto DVDs to be sent to promoters and festivals who might, possibly, want to employ you.