When stay-at-home orders were finally enacted in Florida in early April, DrewFilmedIt left his place in Miami and made the four-hour drive to St. Petersburg, Florida, to be with his family. The 19-year-old director spent the first two weeks of lockdown playing video games. Then the Pompano Beach rapper Jackboy called him about making a music video. Drew turned the opportunity down. But Jackboy kept calling. And calling.

1. John W Tomac
hen stay-at-home orders were finally enacted in Florida in early April,
DrewFilmedIt left his place in Miami and made the four-hour drive to
St. Petersburg, Florida, to be with his family. The 19-year-old director
spent the first two weeks of lockdown playing video games. Then the Pompano
Beach rapper Jackboy called him about making a music video. Drew turned the
opportunity down. But Jackboy kept calling. And calling.
“Every day he would just be like, ‘We shooting today? We shooting today?’”
Drew says.
With his self-titled album set for an April 24 release, Jackboy, a member of
Kodak Black’s Sniper Gang label, needed to put out a video to get the attention
W
How Music Videos Get Made in
the Time of the Coronavirus
Pop stars and indie artists alike are taking new approaches to music videos—and finding
that they may be the most adaptive medium for making creative material in a largely
shut down world
By Eric Ducker May 26, 2020, 8:44am EDT
MUSIC

2. of a (somewhat literally) captive audience. “I feel like during the corona, even
the smaller artists that are not really mainstream yet, this is the time for them
to real deal show, ’cause nobody really has nothing else to do but listen to
everybody’s music,” he says. “During the corona, you should drop, drop, drop. So
by the time we get off of the coronavirus, hey, you might mess around and be
mainstream.”
Eventually Drew relented and drove back to Miami. Together, they made
“Pressure.” They quickly posted it to YouTube, and it now has more than 11
million views.
In a week and a half, Drew and Jackboy collaborated on a total of five videos. “It
used to take me a month to get a million views, but now it’s like within four or
five days,” Jackboy says. “‘Pressure’ did a million the first day out.”
Since a normal-sized production is out of the question right now, these days
Drew brings his own cameras and light to each shoot, plus a Bluetooth speaker
to play back the music. There’s only one other person in his crew. Rentals have
become virtually impossible to find in Miami, so the boat in Jackboy’s video for
“Pack a Punch” belonged to a friend, as did the house in “Cleaning Crew.” Drew
says that if the artist is cooperative and there’s a plan in place, he can finish a
shoot in an hour, which is an extra bonus given the heat in Florida.
After filming, he’ll load the files into his computer at night. When he wakes up,
he works on the edit until the video is done. Since many labels aren’t able to
closely monitor video production and push for changes, he can have a final
product in less than 24 hours. “It’s easier, but it’s not to the full potential [of
what the video could be],” Drew says.
When other artists realized that Drew was still making videos, they started to
reach out. He’s since collaborated with up-and-coming acts like Rod Wave,
Asian Doll, King Von, HOTBOII, and 30 Deep Grimeyy. When we spoke in early
May, he had shot a video every day for the past two weeks. He was back in St.
Petersburg, finishing up edits on four videos and planning more shoots,
including one in Atlanta for Polo G’s “Wishing For a Hero.”
To prevent the possible spread of COVID-19 on his sets, Drew says he provides
hand sanitizer, wears a mask, and tries his best to maintain some space between
himself and his subjects. But not all artists are that careful. Watch Jackboy
cavort with a pair of nearly naked twins in the video for “Pack a Punch,” and it’s
obvious that not everyone is concerned about social distancing protocols. Some
of the artists Drew has worked with have erred on the side of caution, but other
haven’t seemed concerned. “A lot of these artists, I feel like they wouldn’t

3. believe it until they got it,” Drew says of the coronavirus. “They will just live
their normal lives.”
In a time when the threat of COVID-19 is still very real, musicians are trying to
find a balance between staying safe and doing their jobs. The videos that have
been released in the past two months display a spectrum of approaches on how
they keep creating and promoting themselves in a radically altered world.
he global pandemic has upended the entertainment industry along with
almost every other facet of modern life. It has altered all previous norms
around how new content is made and what audiences want to see. By the
end of March, every Hollywood movie production had shut down. A few
television shows have managed to figure out ways to continue filming: daytime
and late-night talk shows cobbled together their own stripped-down setups,
sometimes in the hosts’ basements and attics. Saturday Night Live has aired
three “At Home” editions. Parks and Recreation staged a video chat-themed
special; the CBS drama All Rise took a similar Zoom-ified approach for an
episode. And, of course, both amateur and professional performers have flooded
outlets like Instagram Live and TikTok with comedy sketches, stand-up
routines, music “battles,” intimate at-home concerts, DJ sets, interviews, and a
fair amount of directionless jabbering to fill the hours.
“You have artists who are already comfortable, or are
starting to get comfortable, with more of the raw shoots
that can happen at home. Musicians at the end of the day
are creators, they’ll find a way to continue to bring that
message through video.” — Carlos Cuadros
But music videos, a medium that has tried to secure its cultural and economic
footing ever since MTV shifted to original programming and record labels
slashed budgets in the early 2000s, may be the most adaptive medium for
making new creative material in a largely shut down world. The equipment
needed to shoot a broadcast-ready video is now relatively affordable, or is even
something you’re already using to send group texts and listen to podcasts. The
software to edit the footage or create visual effects is widely available and user
friendly. There are directors all over the country with credible experience, or
ones who are willing to work cheap for the opportunity.
During the first weeks of COVID-19’s spread across the United States, the music
industry mostly cycled out the videos it already had in the can. These offered
strange images of parties packed with bodies or incongruous visions of four
people who aren’t related to each other standing in a room together clutching
their instruments. Carlos Cuadros, the director of digital marketing at RCA
Records, says that initially there was a dip in viewership for music videos. “You
T

4. take people out of their usual consumption habits and context for consumption,
you’re going to have a shift in that consumption,” Cuadros says. Two months
later he says the numbers have ticked back up again.
A spokesperson for YouTube was unable to provide data on how new music
videos have performed on the platform or how many have been uploaded since
stay-at-home measures began, but Cuadros says that his company hasn’t slowed
the amount of content it releases. “People are still looking towards music as a
bit of relief during times like this, or as a bit of a distraction,” he says. “Volume-
wise, there hasn’t been really a huge change in what we’ve been putting out. The
way we’ve been putting it out is a little bit more of a change.”
The major record labels aren’t commissioning actual shoots right now, but they
have increased the number of animated visuals and lyrics videos—like the one
for Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj’s “Say So” remix, which recently topped
Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. And if musicians want to film something themselves,
the labels are open to it. “You have artists who are already comfortable, or are
starting to get comfortable, with more of the raw shoots that can happen at
home,” Cuadros says. “Musicians at the end of the day are creators, they’ll find a
way to continue to bring that message through video.”
On April 2, Drake released “Toosie Slide,” the first clip from a major artist to
comment on the bizarre state of reality. Directed by his longtime personal
chronicler Theo Skudra, the video found Drake in a black balaclava, moving
through the mostly empty Toronto mansion that he’d soon show off in the pages
of Architectural Digest. He looked like hip-hop’s sad Superman, putting on a
fireworks show for himself and trying to kick-start a viral dance challenge from
his Fortress of Solitude.
The rapper-stuck-at-home video is now a trope. In “JUMP,” DaBaby lampooned
the new obsession with deep cleaning and flaunted Lysol spray cans like they
were stacks of hundreds. The pure goofiness of O.T. Genasis in “I Look Good”
felt reminiscent of when Kevin McCallister realized he made his family
disappear. In Yella Beezy’s “Headlocc,” the Texas MC baked and played cards
with a trio of dancers in an Airbnb mansion on the outskirts of Dallas. Some
rappers who have ventured into the world to make videos have seen their plans
thwarted. After Westside Gunn brought out dozens of people to the streets of
Atlanta for “Euro Step,” the gathering was broken up by the police, whose
blurred faces made it into the final cut.
As public health restrictions and recommendations extended through April and
into May, stay-at-home life became the dominant visual language of music
videos. Three years ago, director Jake Schreier filmed the Haim sisters dancing