- How to FILM YOUR OWN MUSIC VIDEO by YOURSELF
For a long time I’ve been a self taught person.
But it was not until I moved from Brazil to Sweden that I emerged into that self learning process completely. It was not until I came to Europe and specially to Sweden, that I understood I could do ANYTHING I wanted even if I knew NOTHING about how to do that. The reason for that is because I have the feeling, from the little time I’ve been here, that most swedes are just like that! They kinda know how to do everything and they do it themselves. And if they don’t know how to do that, they’ll learn that.
It’s just a “self doer” society and, not only it surprised me, it also inspired me to want to learn more and more and be better and better in not only one, but many things.
That’s how I learned so much more about photography and that’s why I force myself to improve day after day. That’s how I got into YouTube and learned how to film for vlogging and, no differently, that is how I decided to go further and film my own music video, from the things I mainly learned from studying cinematography on YouTube.
And, of course, I decided to share this with you.
Making a good music video of yourself on your own might not be THAT easy. It will take you quite some effort and creativity.
But it is possible, and I’ll show you how!
Oh, and in case you want to see all of the examples to every detail I talk about in this post, consider watching the video here.
- Define the concept
The first big deal to make a nice video is to come up with a nice CONCEPT. Are you telling a story? Are you just sharing beautiful images that have something to do with your message? What’s the main thing in your video?
If you’re shooting a music video on your own, the first good tip I have for you is: go for simple ideas! Going too crazy might make it hard for you to direct and be on the video at the same time, so think about it right from the start!
Keep in mind you will have to be in front and behind the camera the whole time, or at least most of the time, in most cases.
My song is named Fica and it is about a person who loves another and asks them to stay. It refers to playful elements such as waterfalls with soap bubbles, cotton clouds and since we were in the middle of the pandemic when I had this idea of recording the video, I thought i’d use the STAY AT HOME along with the STAY WITH ME from the music as an idea… and along with that, I thought I’d create a playful scene.
That leads us to step number two, which is:
2. Set your location
Where are you going to shoot the video?
As the idea was to shoot the video myself, I really wanted to shoot this at home, and the STAY AT HOME would help to confirm my concept. So great!
Depending on the size of your video, though, having a unique location might end up being pretty boring after a while.
That’s why step number 3 is also very important!
3. Set the scenes
My song is almost four minutes long so I had to think of something that would give it versatility, motion and something that would keep my audience connected to it until the end. For that reason I decided to set 3 different scenes in my house.
Two of them would be in my bedroom, but with two completely different moods.
As part of the story, I would have myself talking to my mom via facetime during the pandemic and, in a first moment, we would be sad and bored and to help showing that, I decided to have a messy room, that way I would be able to give it a “I’m a mess” feeling to the viewer.
The second scene would be a playful bedroom. It would be a second moment of the video, where I would be talking to my mom again, but this time we would be happy and hopeful of better times ahead of us. So I thought I could have my bedroom clean and play with some colorful lights around, to make it kind of magical and fairy, which would bring this light and hopeful feeling to it.
And the last scene would be shot in my living room, where I have a big white wall and where I could set some cotton clouds I produced with the help of my husband, so I would have some more playful elements that matched the playful lyrics of the song. Oh, and by the way, if you want to read the translated words for the song, I will leave it down here in the description or you can just turn the Closed Caption when you watch the video.
4. Set your references
And the truth is, at least to me, all steps 1 to 4: the idea, the location, setting the scenes and the references, they kind of come together… they do not always come in this exact order.
This is the first time I will shoot a music video alone, but I’ve been part of the pre-production of many other music videos in my life and steps 1–4 I just mentioned to you not always come in this order.
Sometimes I think of the references first, other times I think of a place where I’d like to shoot first, or sometimes I just have a cool idea or concept and I start from there…
It really depends, so don’t get caught on the exact order, allow the ideas to come as they show and just have in mind you will need all those 4 steps thought of before you think of shooting.
For this video, I had this reference that I wanted to use for the playful bedroom with the lights… so I got to Amazon and bought many of these cups, I bought pink and blue lights, I used my Govee strip light to light the back of my bed and boom, scene set!
For the messy room, I had in mind a photo of Courtney Love I had seen a long, long time ago and I went for it to get me started. I knew if I wanted to make mine closer to this I would have to get my room a LOT messy and dirty, but I didn’t need that much… It was just an idea to guide me and I could use that just as a reference for my version of it.
And for the cotton cloud scene in the living room, I found this youtube video where I learned how to do cotton clouds myself, bought the material along with the rest of the things I just told you on Amazon and produced them. I also had this scene with an umbrella full of lights that I wanted to try out in the living room set. This reference photo is from a photographer I admire very much, Brandom Wolfel, and so I also bought a transparent umbrella and some more yellow fairy lights to stick to the interior of it.
5. Write the script
It’s time to break the idea into pieces, in order to make it really tangible.
If you’re telling a story, it’s time to write that down in images. What exact images will you have in order to show what you have in mind? How are you going to shoot them? Close ups? Wide open shots? Real shallow depth of field or not? From above? From the side? Are you having detail shots? What kind of details? What shots do you need in 60fps or 120fps so you can make some slow mo shots? Break it down with as many details as possible, that way, you will know exactly WHAT you will need and, as you will be in front of the camera as well, it will be easier not to forget anything on the day of the shoot.
And of course, maybe you don’t have all these answers at first, maybe you will need to make some tests first. But write what you have in mind with as many details as possible and later you can just improve that, after making some scene tests and — we’ll get there — But first, we will go to step number 6.
6. Choose & buy the scenic elements
What will you have in your scenes that are essential to tell your story? Or that you really want there? Think about that, because you might need to buy some things at this stage.
In my case, for my ideas, as I told you, I would need to buy different kinds of lights, the cups to put the lights in, everything I needed to produce the cotton cloud and a transparent umbrella.
I spent 150 euros to buy all the elements from this video. So if you think that, at least in Brazil, recording a music video would cost me AT LEAST 20 times this cost, to me it was a pretty good deal!
7. Make up, hair and clothing
This step doesn’t have to be at this exact order either, but it is important to be thought of. You could have thought about this in the beginning, along with the idea or the references, but I preferred to leave it as one of the last steps because I wasn’t sure of the colors I would use for my lights yet, and that could make a difference on the color of the outfit I would choose.
It is important to have this sorted out before the day, though. What colors and what kind of clothing, make up and hair works with the mood of your video? If you’re home, in your bed, sad, you’re not going to dress like if you were going to a party.
You won’t have a heavy make up either!
At least you shouldn’t as I truly believe that when it comes to clothing, make up and hair for videos, thinking of the general concept to decide them is the way to go.
For that reason, since I was just “staying home” for my video, I needed something that reinforced that idea. So I needed casual clothes, casual make up and not much to the hair either.
8. The pre-production
If you won’t produce any scenic elements, great! One less step for you, but if you are, time to work! In my case, it took me an afternoon to get this all produced and set: the cotton clouds, the cups with the lights and the umbrella. Do whatever you need to do because after you have it all in hands, we will go to step number 8.
9. The equipment and scene tests
This is one of the last steps in the pre-production of a music video process.
Once you’ve got it all figured out, it’s time to place it all in the scene and see how it looks in practice. I think this step is essential for you to have a real idea of what you have in hand.
Angles, elements, different lenses, test equipment, test light… see if anything is missing. This is where all can go wrong and when you still have time — and sanity — to fix them. Because believe me, it is crazy enough recording a video with a team…. If you’re shooting by yourself and you want to do something good, you will have A LOT of things in mind on the day, so making this test is great to avoid late surprises and to save you time at the date of the shoot.
In my case, for example, I bought the wrong batteries for the lights. Not a big deal, huh? But what if that happened at the date of the shoot? That would be an hour wasted going after some batteries… and believe me, you will need that extra energy to do your best both behind and in front of the camera. So you will hope you won’t need to go after scene elements you could have taken care of before on the day of the shoot.
Also, for the test, I took about one to two hours testing different lenses, aperture, angles and positioning things in different orders in my bed. I also was not sure if I was going to use both the blue and the pink lights inside the cups or if I’d only use the pink ones… so I tried both of them. I took some shots of the scene when I was happy with it and on the day of the shoot, I just looked at the photos I took from the test and placed everything exactly where they should be. It saved me so much time and effort! Then I could focus on what really mattered: the execution.
10. Time to shoot!
Ok, we’ve got all the pre-production done, now it’s time for the real hard work! Time to shoot!
I separated my music video shooting in 3 different days, as I had 3 different “scenes” and as I was going to film it by myself. I wanted to make sure I had everything right and I didn’t want to rush through the processes, so that would give me enough time to settle everything up and work each of the scenes carefully.
The shooting ran out just smoothly. No big surprises, everything according to what I planned. The equipment and scene tests I had done before in fact saved me a lot of work and I could mainly focus on just following the list of scenes I had down on my script. I also followed the photos I had taken on the day of the test shots to find the good angles. Of course that, in the end, I had some extra ideas and ended up doing some extra shots of different things in different angles, but having all the main things down really helped me not to forget anything or stress about having to remember it all…
To be able to shoot myself and make sure I had the focus right and that I had everything in the right place, I used my cell phone as a monitor. It was not ideal, I wanted to actually use my laptop as a monitor but for some reason my cable did not work on the day of the shoot, so this is the way I could work it out. Since I had the facial tracking on and my face would show in most of the scenes, using my cell phone as a monitor wasn’t a big of a problem, but if you have the chance to monitor it with a bigger screen, you’ll definitely play safer.
11. The editing process
After all this, it was time to edit.
This was the part of the process I most struggled with.
I had never edited a music video before and I had to deal with something like 30 to 35 simultaneous takes at the same time.
After I learned how to use Angles though, it became pretty easy to make the cuts. I just synched the original audio with the audio played during the recordings and I could just watch all of the scenes being played at the same time on Final Cut Pro viewer. Then I could just easily select the scenes I wanted and place them exactly where I wanted the cuts to happen.
An important tip for you, though: I really recommend you record several takes of the entire song and that the audio from your camera is actually working and capturing the real audio from the studio, that way your editor will be able to sync the original song to the audio being played on your videos and you will have several angles and versions of the entire song to choose from.
Believe me, I learned the hardest way: it’s better to have more than less. Many times I missed two, 3 or 4 scenes for the final video because I had not recorded the entire song several times. Instead, I had recorded just pieces of it. If you record pieces of the song instead of the entire song, you will have much more work to sync everything and you might end up missing something!
Plus, another great tip is: always make some B-roll that can be used anywhere on the video. Details from the shots: in my case I did b-rolls of the photographs, the computer, the lights, of me playing the guitar, of me looking at the photos, of me talking to my mom, of me playing around, of me bored looking to the ceiling and so on… if you have those scenes that can be used anywhere on the video, they might save you in case you don’t have something good that fits the lyrics in a specific place where you don’t like any of the initial scenes.
I’m not going into further details of the editing process of the video because this video would just get too long and the editing process is not exactly a topic about how to shoot your own music video.
If you would like me to go further into details about how I edited my music video, though, please drop me a comment below and maybe I can make a whole new video only talking about that in detail.
Now I will leave you with the whole video and please, if you like this video and it helps you somehow, please also help me out by subscribing to my channel and hitting the like button. I really appreciate that.
