It is my earnest desire to assist you in your preparation for this wonderful day and to help make sure it really is a wonderful day. This document is written with the assumption you are not shooting the video yourself but because of a low budget you will have a significant input in the production. I am also assuming the video will be shot with a professional attitude in order to achieve superior results. Directors and crew members may also use this guide as a powerful insight into the music video shoot from the artist and band perspective.
In other words “Lights, camera, action!”. This section will walk you through the usual filming process from your perspective (sparing you the technical details)
• First you arrive on set all ready to star in the video only to find out you have to wait…
• If you need make up for the camera (even if you’re a guy) and there is a makeup artist, you will get made up.
• If you need to change into a costume you do that.
• The director will come to you and explain in further detail what you will need to do for the next take
• In the meantime lights if any will be set up, the set, necessary will be set up etc. Basically people will be doing things why you impatiently wait to get started
• Finally everyone is ready; you get to your position.
The director (or the assistant director) shouts a series of commands. You know you ready to go when you hear “Action!”
• You do what you do best, that is performing until the director says “Cut!”
• If the take was good you move to the next one , else you do it again
• And the process repeats itself until the director gets all the shots he wants then he announces “It’s a wrap”
• Everybody then packs up and goes home.
• If there is more than day necessary to complete the video you do the same as above for the rest the shoot.
After this the video is taken into post-production with which you probably won’t want to bother yourself with, with the possible exception of editing. The best thing to do though is to trust your director and make changes and corrections after he/she presents the edited video to you.