1. Essential Tips/Must Do’s
Pre-Production Must Do’s
• Copy of letter to artist or record label must be on blog with your response to it.
• Use a strong simple idea. This works so much better than making something overly
complicated.
• Use a genre that is clearly identifiable
• Consider the genre of music you use ie Rock Music is performance heavy and Pop Music is
mainly narrative based.
• Avoid complicated narrative.
• If you use the theme of narrative for your video don’t stick too closely to the lyrics.
• No sound tracks with DRUGS or SWEARING.
• You will need to re-brand the band so new name and logo and the promo must have a
completely different look and feel to the original band. That is why you may find it easier to
choose an unsigned band.
• Avoid too many locations and set-ups, stick to one if possible.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment.
• Focus on one element eg narrative or performance or being visually striking, don’t try and do
it all!
• Make sure your storyboard is true to your idea down to the last shot as this is essential in
helping save time during filming.
• Know your lyrics and sing along accurately.
• Vowels are easy to get accurate mouth movement to whilst constanents are harder. Practice
in the mirror regularly BEFORE you reach the production stage.
• Keep x2 weekends free to get promos shot (also put time aside in the schedule and yours for
re-shooting sections)
• You will need to know, as you will be marketing the artist through your ancillary tasks if this
is the artists 1st, 2nd etc album so you know where they are in their star status and how
developed they are as a star. You will need to do a professional photoshoot with your artist if
you are choosing to use their face on the advert or digipack. This exercise is a gift for all those
studying photography at A Level.
2. Production Must Do’s
• Edit the track down to three minutes before you shoot if it is longer than this so you comply
to the requirements set out by the examining board.
• Shooting plenty of footage is vital to making a good finished product.
• Shoot one shot all the way through from start to finish to act as your music video base and
then add other shots into this. This makes for a much easier edit.
• Film with the track playing so it can be picked up on the microphone clearly and be heard by
the artist to lip sync along to.
• Lipsync – you are graded on accurate lyp sync
• Use lots of close ups to reveal your artist.
• Performance – believable
• Different shot angles
Post Production Must Do’s
• Expand your audio track so you can see clearly where particular words occur and then can
line them up with the visuals. Lip sync is crucial to how you are graded.
• Use markers (on the premiere pro edit suite) to help you then mark these sync points. Editing
to markers is a MUST as it helps create alignment of track.
• Keep this recorded music track in your timeline but mute the timeline so it is only used as
reference when need be. Then work from a top quality recording of the track, which you will
import into your timeline.
• No more than 3minutes long
• Editing to the beat of the music – this is what editing markers are for.
