Stand-Out Shorts

by Russell Evans

  Everything about music promos screams “look at me” – this is the movie to make if you love images and think that dialogue just slows everything down. Music promos used to be about seeing the band in action, goofing around. Now we expect something to project an image that suits the band – with or without them on screen.

  A promo pushes the boundaries, inventing, experimenting, making do with no cash, stretching what you can do with very little. Anything goes, everything rides on the visuals – so that means you get to make the kind of movie you always wanted to make, freed up from the constraints of story, or even having to make sense. You only have two aims: it has to be cheap to make, and it has to grab the viewer constantly. You’ll need a lot of ideas, but it has to all hang together. It can’t be self-indulgent, and it must be memorable. Use that box of tricks on your PC, creating effects in editing and messing around with the colors. Just remember to please the viewer with the shortest attention span.

  MY KIND OF MOVIE?

  You wanted to study art but couldn’t draw, or spent your time doodling images like Donnie Darko. Maybe you did some DJing, and loved the projections behind the band, and maybe you enjoy editing in a weird way. You believe rules are there to be ignored without negotiation and everyone else just gets in the way of you and your extraordinary ideas. You wouldn’t want to make anything else – the thought of making a movie with a story makes your heart sink. All that narrative, plodding on and on, stopping you from the real fun of taking your imagination out around the block.

  WHAT’S IT FOR?

  Music promo is an industry like none other. It’s big, has a fast turnover of new promos, and it needs new talent constantly, people who can come up with new no-budget ideas. Meanwhile, promos are being shown everywhere, as background wallpaper, but rarely watched in the same way you watch other kinds of movies. Sure, they are there to promote a band, but they are also used to create an ambience, with screens in bars and clubs.

  Start local by seeking out bands in your town that need a promo. You can also take a sideways move into working in live visuals, producing images to project behind a band on stage, or as a VJ in a club.

  Meanwhile, some cash-strapped record companies, hit by a revenue downturn from illegal downloading, are looking toward students and new filmmakers to make promos. Don’t assume that promo jobs get handed to established hands – you stand a chance of getting paid for your work if you can prove you can generate a neat idea on a low budget. Form a small group of artists and filmmakers, think up a name for yourselves, and start pitching for work.

  HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME?

  Try to keep energy flowing by keeping preparation down to a minimum. Make the film more instinctively and intuitively than others, relying on just a strong feeling that you are doing the right thing.

  Promo directors tend to work quickly, so aim for a shoot lasting just a day or two, with the whole job lasting about a week.

  HOW HARD IS IT?

  Difficulty level:

  You’ve got the freedom to just do what you want to do and answer to no one else. You don’t need to make your movie resemble others in the same genre because music promos succeed by how much they don’t resemble each other, unlike, say, noir films or action thrillers, which succeed largely through conformity and similarity. It means the spotlight is on your ideas. If you get inspired often and get original ideas coming to you like fireworks, then this is an easy project for you.

  You need:

  To be able to think up simple ideas

  To make them for almost no money, so they don’t rely on big costs

  To quite possibly be a control freak

  A sense that every idea is not quite good enough yet until you have twisted it slightly, given it a new slant that no-one else has tried yet

  To work quickly

  To enjoy editing

  WHO ELSE DO I NEED?

  One camera operator, preferably two

  Lighting

  Designer

  WHAT KIT DO I NEED?

  High-definition cameras

  Tripod

  Lighting kit consisting of at least one large lamp (300 W or more) plus two smaller ones

  Good post-production software such as Adobe After Effects and Flash

  IF YOU LIKE THAT WATCH THIS

  Michel Gondry does it for real – try his collected music promos, shot without resorting to expensive digital effects and instead using on-set tricks and sleight of hand to create stunning visuals. Gondry perfected this technique in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

  Or try anything by Spike Jonze, the Gollum of the music promo: low-tech, mischievous, and with a restless, roaming imagination.

  And check out Hype Williams, Daniel Levi, Lynn Fox, Chris Cunningham, David Wilson and anything on Onedotzero DVDs (www.onedotzero.com), Warp Records or Zen TV. Watch the latest directors direct from the stable at Ridley Scott’s company RSA (www.rsafilms.com) or www.anonymouscontent.com or www.colonelblimp.com.

  FIGURE 39.1 RSA Black Dog has produced some of the best music promos, including this image for Florence and the Machine, directed by Dawn Shadforth.

  GET INSPIRED

  Limit how much you look at other promos. Instead, check out viral films on the web where a great low-budget idea gets passed around quickly. Also look at classic montage sequences in films such as the training scene in Rocky IV; or an ironic sequence of news footage edited to Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911.

  PREPRODUCTION ESSENTIALS

  Style sheets; lighting designs; budget; permission forms for locations; health and safety sheets; contracts; copyright release for music; shooting schedule

  See Chapter 11, Brief Directory of All the Paperwork You Need.

  USING THE CAMERA

  The idea is everything with promos. That means that every other part of the movie has to relate back to this idea, from the lighting to the camera, to the color and design.

  LIVE PROMOS

  Live performances can be used as part of a promo where you might record other stuff later. If you record live, use two camcorders – one to catch the overall set, from the mixing desk (usually midway down the auditorium) and another to catch a range of close-ups, more diverse angles, looser and wilder than the main camera.

  Use the main camera to record the sound, or if possible ask to get a direct recording from the mixing desk as a digital audio file (.wav). You’ll easily be able to sync the images on your cam with the sounds from the audio file on the timeline. Record some crowd noise too using the main camera.

  NON-LIVE PROMOS

  These are promos without the band, or where the band acts or takes part, without performing. Anything goes here so use other chapters to help according to what sort of movie you are making – Chapter 34, Horror if the promo is dark and weird; Chapter 44, Road Movie if the promo is centered on a journey, and so on. Take a look at Chapter 27, Web Your Movie to get some tips on working for the ultra-small screen.

  EDITING

  Montage could be the most useful style for your promo so use Chapter 22, Editing Methods: Montage to help you. Montage means you can be creative, try out more experimental ideas, and it’s more rhythmic.

  When you have a lot of shots edited roughly on the timeline, look at the rhythm of the shot lengths throughout the film, judging by the length of the clips on the video track. For instance, you could have some shots half a second long, followed by three wide shots lasting longer, say four seconds each. Then you return to the faster shots and so on. Have a structure to the length of the clips – it should look like a regular repeated pattern on the timeline.

  At some point in the film you can look for a point where the promo changes direction – like in a song where it moves up a key to get a fresh impetus of momentum. You could change tack here too – perhaps up the pace of the editing, or try some new effect.

  LEGALESE

  Music clearance. You’ll need to get written c
learance from the owner of the music track you used. The hassle-free option is to make a promo for a band who are not yet signed and still own the rights to all their music – but even then get a written form which gives you the right to use the promo in festivals or online.

  Check you also get release forms from anyone in the promo.

  Upload It

  Best sites to upload to:

  www.veoh.com, www.revver.com, and www.blastronetworks.com

  Best communities to join:

  We Love Music at vimeo

  “Do you love music? Join us! Share your music and music videos.”

  www.vimeo.com/groups/100

  Best channels to watch:

  Future Shorts at You Tube or try videos uploaded on We Love Music at vimeo

  * * *

  MUSIC PROMO SCHEDULE

  This movie works best on a fast turnaround, at 48 hours to 7 days.

  Table 39.1 Add these extra jobs to any of the template schedules in Section 6, Make It Happen: Schedules.

  What to Do Who Needs to Do It How Long This Will Take Chapters in This Book to Help You

  Choose music to use for promo Director

  Work on ideas for the promo; meet with the band to discuss ideas and options Director 90 mins

  Previz: start turning the ideas you and the band discussed into actual locations, places, people, and images for the promo Director 2 hours Ch 7 Previz

  Budge Director 2 hours Ch 4 Budgets

  Designs: work on the overall style of the promo; choose a limited number of colors and use them throughout; think about the way you are going to use the camera, and the lighting you can use; choose ideas that fit into the main theme for the promo and stick to them Director Spend as long as you need; allow a couple of hours at least Ch 5 Designing Your Movie

  Chapter | Forty

  Citizens News/Video Journalist

  FIGURE 40.1 (Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, ©Nikada, Image# 4629603)

  WHAT IS IT?

  A news piece made by you, uploaded and shown on the web.

  You can make the news every night. TV news companies have lost money as we change our news habits: more people now switch to online news, catching the latest events via word of mouth from their social networking sites, and seeing the essentials on YouTube. The difference is that the big news clips that get swept around the world are the ones made by someone with a camcorder who happened to be at the right place in the right time. If you want the job, that’s the future of the daily news – you are now the anchorman, the producer and the viewer.

  But how can you take advantage of this? Suppose you want to get more involved in exposing injustice, showing real events as they happen, and actually go seek the news rather than just wait for it to land in your neighborhood? If so you need to get prepared to take on the mantle of “citizens journalist.” Find stories, shoot, share them, spread the word via network sites such as Twitter, and become one of a powerful posse of people looking for real stories that need telling. It’s become a big part of the protest movement, like in a series of protests in Iran in 2009 where people found they could get real events on the web in hours, while the regular news guys were still stuck at customs. The images uploaded showed what was happening, and provoked an outcry around the world.

  A citizens news video will be short, less than five minutes and ideally 60 seconds, perhaps with a voiceover or text. It is usually part of a stream of news clips on an event, and linked to a blog, or Twitter.

  MY KIND OF MOVIE?

  You have one ear to the ground, often looking for events going on that affect you. You distrust everything you hear from those in power, and most of what you hear on the news; you believe only what you see and hear for yourself, rather than from big-business media. You might be interested in conspiracy theories, but you know that even they are just another spin on the news.

  You like drama, and to you it’s crucial to put together a story in a way that people relate to it, just like narrative movies. The bottom line, though, is seeing the truth, and sharing the truth.

  WHAT’S IT FOR?

  People trust you, like they don’t trust the news corporations. You can show events as they happen and present real life as it unfolds. This movie tends to be focused solely on the facts from your point of view. Unlike the news companies, you don’t have to worry about showing all sides of the story – if there is another side to be told, someone else will pick a camcorder and get to work. You only have to be true to what you know, what you see and what happened around you.

  This movie is for global or local consumption. Anywhere, anytime, by anyone – your clip will travel as far as it can, but you can help it on its way by using blogging or social networking sites to spread the word. Expect to sell a clip if it is picked and used by major TV news stations.

  HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ME?

  The key to the success of this project is working quickly. The more practiced you are with filming, the more you are certain that you can shoot, edit, and upload within a few hours.

  FIGURE 40.2 Activist sites such as www.undercurrents.org are popular places to show videos. BeyondTV is a festival which highlights the best of these.

  Viewers will sit up and take notice of videos made quickly. The longer you take to edit it, the more likely it is that people will think it is tainted with the possibility of digital manipulation, so avoid anything that seems to add gloss to the video, such as music or excessively designed text.

  HOW HARD IS IT?

  Difficulty level:

  You will be working solo, controlling the camera and sound, so be prepared to use your mics in situations where you have had little time to practice or run through what is happening. Good quality sound is crucial here. Use a tripod when you can – the images will be shown on small screens on the web or phones, so avoid shaky movement of the camera, and use close-ups wherever possible. Practice using the camera under low light conditions, opening up the iris to let more light in.

  You need:

  To feel OK about working alone, but also able to talk to people to get help

  Have a strong nose for a story

  To be fast – when events are taking off you need to get to the heart of the action quickly

  To be undeterred by the people who want to stop your story getting out there

  To work in a tight, efficient way, able to shoot what you want without wishing you had time to rehearse

  WHO ELSE DO I NEED?

  You can work entirely alone, but it might be good to get in touch with people who have done this kind of thing before so you know how to handle the situation. Also, get involved in networks of other news gatherers, so that when events take off you have your pathway already in place to get the video out there.

  WHAT KIT DO I NEED?

  Sturdy camera

  Tripod

  Hand-held mic

  Extra recording cards/discs/tapes

  IF YOU LIKE THAT WATCH THIS

  Tune in to Undercurrents.org (www.undercurrents.org), OneWorldTV (http://tv.oneworld.net), plus particular sites relevant to your own interests such as campaigning groups or charities. Check out online videos of other news events where videos shot by people on the streets were right at the heart of the action – more than the networks – such as the 2009 G20 protests in London.

  For features, get inspired by watching how the truth can be uncovered through images, video or sound. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) centers on a surveillance expert who finds out more than he bargained for, while Michelangelo Antonioni’s ’60s movie Blowup (1966) does the same but with a photographer.

  Closer to the present, try Burma VJ (2009), a powerful movie shot by undercover Burmese people showing what they see as their country’s brutal regime.

  PREPRODUCTION ESSENTIALS

  Release forms—anyone you interview needs to agree to you using them in the film.

  USING THE CAMERA

  • Find out about your rights if you are detained during your
news gathering. Go to www.aclu.org or www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk.

  • Shoot while staying safe. Avoid working alone.

  FIGURE 40.3 Visionontv (http://visionon.tv) is one of many video sharing sites that show uploaded clips from protests and other events.

  • Protect your equipment – some public control forces use flash guns or strobe lights to repel video recording. Look out for use of water or gas to control crowds.

  SHOOTING TEMPLATE (thanks to VisionOntv)

  This will take you 10 minutes only. No editing needed.

  It’s all about where, what, when and why.

  Start recording with your camera/phone pointing at you and say your name (or tag) and location and what the date is. Then have a wide shot of the situation or place and start talking. You’ve told us where and when you are, now tell us what is happening, and why. Get close-up shots of the action or events. Then end on a detail or close-up to get a human angle to what is going on. Keep the camera ultra-steady throughout this whole shoot.

  EDITING