Why Your Music Videos Look AMATEUR
Why do your music videos look amateur? Let's talk about it. What's up everyone my name's Cracka Lack. Welcome back to Cracka Lack TV. In todays video we're going to be talking about what a music video look amateur. We've all seen those music video where everything about it just kinda screams amateur. Also I just wanna go over things that add up to a video being amateur. What separates the good videos from the bad videos. That's what we're gonna talk about here. So I've been shooting music videos for about 10 years now. I've shot almost 400 music videos so I've definitely been victim of shooting amateur videos. At one point we're all amateurs so whether you're just getting started out shooting music videos now and you are at that amateur level or if you're past that you just wanna make sure you're not doing these things so you're good to go and you're in the clear.
Look I'm not trying to hurt anyone's feelings with this video this is to help other people out so if one of the five things that I do name is something that you find yourself doing a lot just try to fix that. Trust me still to this day our number one goal is to make the customer happy and sometimes you know customers don't have the best ideas so we gotta deliver what the client wants. As long as they're happy they'll keep coming back.
Our job is to do the best job that we can to influence them to let us do what we do. You gotta make the best out of what you're working with. And to help me out to go over these five reasons why your music videos are amateur I have RoyalZProduction. If you've ever searched music video tutorial or music video tips you've seen this guy. He's like the jesus christ of music video tutorials on youtube. He also posts a lot of other helpful tips and tutorials for filmmakers and music video directors, behind the scenes footage, vlogs all that good stuff. Sub to me if you're new to my channel. Make sure you subscribe and hit the bell to be notified for future uploads. Alright so let's jump into those five reasons now. alright so number one wrong camera settings. I think a lot of things it always just goes back to the fundamentals right.
Understanding how to use a camera. Understanding what the shutter speed is, what frame rate you should be filming in. I'll say honestly frame rate more than anything so the final output of your music video when you're rendering when you're exporting it should be in 24 fps. The most common thing that I see in music videos where it just doesn't look professional and it looks weird it looks homemade in the video on youtube you can see that they uploaded it and it's 60 fps n it's like that's why right there.
That's a quick simple fix. I have a video on my channel going over camera settings for music videos make sure you check that out. In that video I go from start to finish over every single camera setting that you can adjust to actually get the correct exposure for your shot. What's up guys tip number two that I got for you is stop using the same focal length for every single clip in your music videos. So by this I mean don't use a wide angle for every single clip. Don't use a punched in look for every single clip. Mix it up a little bit.
I have a series of lenses that I personally like to use to supplement from a wide angle shot to a close up shot or a mid range shot is what I like to call them. Let's say you want a handheld shot and expose the entire background and your entire surroundings, you're probably gonna want to use a wide angle for something like that. Let's say you're also in a tight space you're also gonna wanna use a wide angle. I personally use the Tokina 11-20mm 2.8 wide angle lens. Second shots I will take in a music video will be mid range shots. So mid range shots can either be done handheld or a lot of times on a gimbal. On a DJI Ronin-m is what I personally use. I like using a 35mm focal length for my medium range shots.
So I personally use a Sigma 35mm 1.4 on my Lumix s1 as well. And this is going to achieve just a different depth and just a different look using a prime 35mm for you mid range shots is a great starting point and I mean I'm a advanced shooter I'm a professional shooter and I love using the 35mm focal length for my mid range shots and even for some close up as well. Now if I wanna get super close up with my shots I personally love using the canon 24-70mm 2.8 lens It's the version two lens it's a little pricey but it's gonna give you a really sharp image I mean Canon full frame lenses will generally always give you a sharp image but I really like the 24-70 for when I'm getting I don't know like a close up shot of in a rap video someone's on like their phone let's say I wanna get that close up shot where all you see is their eyes their mouth moving and their hand and then the phone and let's say I just wanna get this part right here it's really easy to like crop in you're not like all up in their face like this shooting so you can be you know from a decent distance but still punch in and get that really clean crisp shot.
So yeah just make sure you have a few different lenses in your gear bag I mean you can even pull it off with 1-2 lenses. I personally like having a mid range lens like a 35mm and then a wide angle lens like a 11-20mm wide angle is great. I heard if you're a sony user there's probably a lot of Sony people watching this I believe it's the 10-16mm that's an amazing wide angle lens too I believe it's also a 2.8. It's totally your call with what lenses you wanna use for each specific scene. I personally like to switch it up a bit. So every scene doesn't look the exact same. Dope, another thing is not enough variety. You ever watch a music video and then it's like within the first 30 seconds you've kinda seen everything that happens and as you continue to watch the music video it's just that same few shots that you seen in the first 30 seconds that just go over and over and over for 3-4 minutes. I would say lack of variety in the shots you get.
A tip would be if you're in 1 location let's say I'm sitting right here, you can get one shot that's real close up of the person sitting here then you can get one shot farther out where you can see my mid torso. Then you can have me stand up and be you know that's 3 shots in one little area right here. Then I could sit down on the floor over there and get a far away shot where I'm sitting there, slow mo. I would recommend to just remember that your job doing the video is to capture a visual for the song.
And I would say the hardest part is to keep the audience engaged and tuned in from start to finish of your video. So songs that have a story to it it's very easy to just get your story from start to finish. When you're shooting the video try to think of the intro and what you wanna show when the song comes on think of how you're gonna keep people entertained through out it, and then an outro get some outro shots that end the video. Usually just a lot of b-roll. To throw a number out there I usually with most songs are like 2 verses and then a hook I would get 1 scene for the first verse at least, and then 1 scene for the second verse that would be about as simple as I would go n at each scene I would get at least 3-5 shots, 3-5 shots at the second location.
That would be bare minimum just remember it's better to over shoot than to under shoot and you don't wanna be sitting in the editing room with not enough footage and you're trying to make somethin out of nothing. Alright guys so tip number 4 is make sure the artist that you're shooting is actually performing the song while you're shooting the performance scenes. By this I mean a performance scene if you're maybe new to shooting music videos, a performance scene is where the artist is actually singing along to the song out loud and performing it as they are performing it even live.
So a couple reasons why this is very important for the artist to be singing the song out loud is because sometimes if their mouth is just moving to the lyrics it almost looks like their mumbling the lyrics a little bit. It's also gonna throw their vibe off completely. Their hand movements won't be there. Their energy won't really be there especially if it's a hype song they have to be singing out loud you can tell them to speak up a bit. There's been many times where I'm shooting a music video I'm a quarter way through the performance scene, I notice that the artist like I can't hear their voice while they're singing along to the song or throughout the performance scene I will actually tell them while I'm shooting you know speak up sing it out loud otherwise it's gonna look awkward I'll just spit that out there. and like immediately the artist will like start singing out loud and that is very very important. Another thing I will say if some artist are just self conscious about singing out loud which happens it's normal I like to always make my first scene out of any music video a performance scene.
I'll toss the camera on a gimbal I'll maybe even do it handheld I consider this a warm up shot. Basically just warming up the artist just getting them familiar especially if it's their first ever music video getting them familiar with the performance scene and making sure from that point on when you're taking the more you know scripted treatment shots that they are singing out loud through out every single scene. Let's talk color grading. When you're color grading footage, your job is to enhance the footage that you've you wanna make it look better.
So when it comes to inexperienced color grading it's usually trying to do too much. Sometimes you don't have to do much. You'll see a lot of people over do it on the contrast or they make the blacks way too dark and then videos just too dark. Or they raise the whites too high and the sky is all blown out. What I would recommend is as you're adjusting the colors make your adjustment and then turn it on and off to see the before and after and then like tone it down. Make another adjustment see the before and after fine tune it from there. Remember guys these are just opinions and things that we both have learned along the way. Me and RoyalZProduction we have another collab on his channel where we go over what we wished we knew before we started shooting music videos. I'll put a link to that on the screen. If you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up.
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