Today’s fans don’t just want to hear your music, they want to watch a video to see how you and your band look. Making a band video is one of the new skills that are necessary for bands to learn today. At Scottsdale Music Academy, we often shoot starter videos of the students so that they can see how they sound and look on video.
For instance, here are some of the students in our Band Coaching program running through the rock classic “I Love Rock n Roll””
So if you’re in a band and looking to make your first do-it-yourself video on the cheap, here are some ideas to get it going. Overall, work quickly, and have fun!
- Pick one of the band’s best songs!
- When you’re figuring out which video to make, start by picking the song that best represents the band and is (hopefully) also one of your band’s best songs. Videos take time to create, edit, mix and upload, so make it worth your time to do a good song.
- Invite your friends to help!
- Having more people around your video production can make it a lot more fun for the band, and you might get crazy good ideas from one of your friends. If you’re lucky to score some friends around, give them each a small assignment, so they feel like they have a piece in the production. Maybe one friend can be the person to help the singer switch hats or jackets during the guitar solo.
- Shoot video on a few decent phones
- Now, of course, it would be great to shoot your band video on a high-end DSLR HDTV video camera, but we’re talking DIY cheap to start here. So assuming you and a few of your friends all have decent mobile phones, ask them to bring their camera to the shoot. You can set up 3-4 phones around the main band area. And then shoot video clips of the band performing from 3- different angles.
- Live sound or the recorded track?
- The band should decide beforehand if you want to create the video around an already recorded song, or if you will record a song live while you’re shooting the video. Either way works OK, but you should consider some decent microphones and a recording set up on your location for the band sound.
- Keep up the energy!
- There is a lot of moving parts when creating a band video. You want to make sure the lighting looks OK (especially if you’re doing the shoot at night), the camera angles work, the band members look OK through the lens, the setting works, and more. Detailing with these details takes time and energy, so be aware of staying in a good upbeat mood, and keeping the energy up[. Too often, the setup time takes away band members’ enthusiasm, so by the time you get to the actual shoot, there a tired look to the group members. Be keen to avoid that!
Learning to play music and having band videos are necessary requirements for any aspiring musician. If you want to learn to play and get better on your chosen instrument then contact us at Scottsdale Music Academy at 602-751-3537 today for your FREE first lesson!
We’re Scottsdale’s leading music academy for beginning and intermediate musicians, and we can help you understand not only music theory but also simple things like looking good on camera for your band video!