The Pre-Production and Production of Music Videos

Today's music video standard is relatively high - modern technology allows video content to be viewed by anyone anywhere. It is for this reason that a song's promotion can now rest heavily on its accompanying music video, as this is an area of marketing that is ideal for brand advertisement. It is of the music video producer's best interest therefore to ensure a high quality music video is created for whichever band/artist they invest in. The demand for quality can be so high that some music videos appear to be heavily cinematic with an almost movie-like standard; (Take The Shoes: Time To Dance for example, you'll find an analysis of its director and the music video on my blog).

One of the key ingredients in the making of a music video is its initial direction; an idea or theme from which the details of the music video may later take shape. This idea emerges from a director's interpretation of the song itself. A song's interpretation - it's tone, messages and voice - can determine its genre and therefore its potential visual style. In the early, conceptual stages of pre-production, the director must visualise a music video that caters to his/her own interpretation of the music and the music's wider target audience. Once the project's initial direction has been established, the director and the rest of the crew will begin to scout for possible filming locations and actors that will serve the project's initial vision. Piecing together desired settings, possible character/actor direction and visual style, concept artists working on the project will begin to create concept stills and animatics for the song and in conjunction with the team/s discerning what is and what is not feasible and what will/will not be included in the project. (High budget music video projects will often have an artificial setting provided for them). Once the cinematic direction has been established - a framework of animatics and story boards supporting the established filming locations and character direction - the project will progress to its filming stage. This stage will usually absorb the largest amount of pre-production budget; music videos of genres like pop and R&B will often have expensive set-pieces and high quality filming locations and props, for example. When the appropriate amount of raw footage has been gathered by the team working on the project, the footage is then processed through a lengthy and scrutinous video editing process where the music video begins to take shape and the footage is lip-synched to the song.

The editing process will utilise advanced video editing software such as Adobe's Premier Pro editing software. This stage is pieced together by a team that will work heavily in conjunction with the director to create the music video that was envisaged in the conceptual stages, while working to see what can be improved on and added when reviewing the footage they have. This stage translates raw the footage they have gathered into a high-quality music video production, utilising all of the specialist editing tools and software to hand that ultimately create a production that is very nearly ready for mass media consumption. The editing stage must also work in conjunction with the producer's ideal direction for the artist/band whom the music video concerns; Consistency in the representation of the band/brand/artist must be maintained throughout all of the content the producer is attempting to sell to media consumers.

When the music video has been finalised, it's distribution largely falls into the hands on the producers, who will usually have the music video appear on various media outlets such as youtube and social networking sites. Producers will also make deals with mass multi-media companies such as VEVO, (whose reach can extend across multiple media platforms such as smartphones and TVs), that will promote their music video.