In an article from Gavin Edwards from Billboard, he interviews several industry leaders in the Music video industry on their techniques for gaining work and just their general experience in the field. What I found most striking in the article, was just how comparatively little the music videos would cost. In the Billboard article, Gabe Spierer, who is vice-president of the Beggars Group (media production), explained that when he is constructing the budgets for some of the videos, “For household name artists, $100,000 to $125,000 is pretty average.” He goes on to say that some of the largest ones are north of half a million, my first serious impression was, that’s it?! But as I thought about those figures some more, they start to make sense. As Spierer had also explained, they will commonly need only a full day of shooting before the production shifts to editing. That means the talent (the singer, which is free) and any extras, camera crew, catering, etc. will only be needed for a relatively short amount of time. While the cameras they use might be MSRP upwards of $50,000.00, they will presumably only be rented for that time, as well, which might even out to around $15,000.00 in equipment rental, I’d guess. Combined with insurance costs and location permits for just a day, that $100,000.00 figure both seems very small and very large at the same time, which I guess, makes it just right! What can be inferred from all of this? Rapid shooting with as little time used in terms of renting equipment, location use, etc. is needed to keep the budget low. In order to make a $5,000.00 music video budget feel like a $50,000.00 one, shoot and rent a high-end camera for just an hour!
But what if you don’t have that $5,000.00 and don’t have a brand sponsorship lined up? The answer is probably in your pocket! iPhones and other smartphones have become incredibly popular on social media and are slowly leaking their way into the music video industry, too. Take Selena Gomez’s ‘Lose You To Love Me’ video released in 2019. The video is shot in a simple black and white format, but has racked up over 3 million views on Apple’s Youtube page- but the amount of views which were paid promotion, is unknown, though.
This isn’t Gomez’s first collaboration with smartphones. A common trope among filmmakers is that the video can be junk in quality, but the audio is what makes or breaks the experience for a viewer. For a music video, all the music is already professional recorded in a studio! This is the perfect scenario- the visuals can be anything! Shot on the best cinema grade camera or shot on a fixed lens consumer smartphone, the visuals don’t matter in quality, what matters is if they help tell the story of the song. That is the objective every music video producer should set out to accomplish when they themselves attempt to direct their own music video.
SOURCE: Billboards. 2018. Edwards, Gavin. How Music Videos Get Made and Make Money. Billboards. view-source:https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8467395/how-music-videos-get-made-and-make-money
Filmmaking for Chimps 