Music videos are one of the neatest ways to release a new song to the world. Not only does it highlight the artist, it can visually set the tone for what type of music is going to be played. The shadows, colors, tones, and angles all affect the direction in which the artist wants to take the viewer. We live in a day in which nearly anyone can shoot and produce a music video for a band, whether a small local garage band, or a Nashville platinum record artist.
When you think of motion backgrounds, or free video loops, you probably think of using them in projects such as webshows, live productions, commercials, school videos, worship backgrounds, and many other ways. Most likely a new album cover never crossed your mind.
Shooting video at night can be challenging, but if you follow a few basic principles, not only will your footage turn out better, you can have more confidence to use all hours of the day to your advantage, rather than just when the sun is up. The word photo, means “light”. When the sun goes down, the atmospheric light changes, and eventually draws to a close. So what are some options for counteracting that drastic light difference?
Story Telling is what all film-makers and producers are using as the latest buzz-words. It varies from year to year, but lately, I’ve heard everyone saying, “It’s all about the story.” I sift through hundreds of hours of footage each week looking for the small details that will make a short film worth watching. From various events, to documentaries, to the occasional testimony, people are naturally built to tell stories of their life. Not all stories are worth rolling out the red carpet and producing, but there is the occasional story that makes your head spin with curiosity.
Many blogs and articles will make you hunt and peck for the answer to whatever question they are trying to answer in the title. Instead of enticing you to read all the way to the bottom, how about I tell you what the point is up front. The number 1 principle for good story telling, is to HAVE A STORY. It sounds overly simple, but far too often we try to shoot and produce a video before we know what the real story is.
Don’t ever let someone talk you into shooting a wedding. It has to be something you want to do. Weddings take alot of work to pull off, not to mention the stress involved in making sure you have the shots you need in order to deliver a good product. There are hundreds of blog posts that talk about the essentials to shoot weddings. That’s all fine and well. Here are three things I have learned as I have filmed weddings.
Youtube is the place to be for finding the hottest trending songs, and along with that, it also contains some of the best motion backgrounds for lyric videos. In her song, Heartbeat, the creators of this video use several flashy colorful motion backgrounds that are over laid onto the footage to create beautiful color washes, also known as video filters. The use of colorful flashes ads energy to the video and keeps the pace of it flowing. Seeing the the video has nearly 45 million views, apparently it’s gone over well with the general public.
I get alot of emails and sometimes social media questions asking, “What do you do with motion backgrounds?” So, I thought I would try and shed some light on several uses for these royalty free video loops. If you watch any TV, there are roughly 6-8 commercials in between the segments of a tv show. Now, out of those 6-8 commercials, on average, 3 of those will have motion backgrounds at the end of them to display text, phone numbers, websites, or other discounts and deals. And as we all know, there are hundreds of commercials displayed each hour. Animated video loops simply make the background image more interesting to watch than a still, static image.
