The Music Industry

How are Music Videos Made?

The Treatment: Directors are sent concepts or ideas to expand on based on the theme or mood of a song.

Planning: Developing the idea with the director and preparing a shooting schedule, cast list etc.

Licensing: Booking sets and gaining shooting permits.

Filming.

Post-production

Editing

What is the Purpose of Music Videos?

In previous years, bands and artists in the industry focussed on album and tour sales to promote and support themselves. However, now that music videos are more common and sites like YouTube can form contracts to pay bands for the amount of views their videos get, making videos well has become even more important. While no band can make their entire income on music videos alone, they are extremely important for promotion, allowing a band to release more content more often, e.g. an album, single and video rather than just an album.

Famous Music Video Directors

Nigel Dick- Directed Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’, Britney Spears’ ‘… Baby One More Time’ and Guns N Roses’ ‘Welcome to The Jungle’

Co-founded ‘Propaganda Films’, one of the major production companies for music videos

His videos earned him 3 MTV awards, 2 Billboard awards and 3 MVPA awards.

BudgetsThe budget for a music video depends entirely on the facilities available to the act. ‘Shoestring’ budgets can range from $2000-$5000, while bigger videos for more popular acts on big record labels can have budgets of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Large proportions of the budget go towards hiring producers and directing staff and hiring equipment. Only small amounts are spent on props or set hire, especially in shoestring budget videos, where locations will usually be publicly available and props will be provided by the cast.

Accessing Music Videos

Music videos have become more prominent online in recent years, and music channels such as MTV have fallen out of favour. The video for ‘Here it Goes’ by Ok Go was seen as the first ‘viral’ music video and is thought to have started a trend of music videos being popular online.