MYSCHOOLACT IS ABOUT MORE THAN JUST A GREAT TRACK: WE’RE HUNTING FOR NEW TALENT THAT OFFERS AN AWESOME PERFORMANCE AS WELL. SO YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE YOUR VIDEO DOES JUSTICE TO THE WAY YOU PERFORM YOUR SONG.

HIT THE RIGHT NOTE


Before you beg a favour from your mate with the camcorder, you have to pick the right track, which is effectively going to be your first single. No pressure at all, but it needs to be awesome. Check out our article on How To Write The Next Big Hit and keep in mind that:

 a) Videos take a bit of effort to put together so make sure you not about to start shooting for a 10 minute ballad.

 b) The song you pick is how your fans will get to know you, so make sure it’s a good representation of what you and the band do.

 
GET YOUR CREW TOGETHER

Now that the song’s sorted, start calling in favours. No matter how simple you think your video will be, you’re probably going to need a crew. We don’t expect you to be shooting professional film for MySchoolAct - you can use your webcam if you need to - but if there are a few friends you can get on board, it’s worth it.

At the least, find someone to wield the camera and someone to help with lighting, styling and making sure you have spare batteries. If you’re lucky, someone in the team will have some basic camera equipment you can use. Renting isn’t cheap, though local community arts associations often have decent rates. Ask around your school too: if there’s a photography department, they’ll definitely have lighting equipment that you might be able to borrow.

LIGHTS, CAMERA...

And a plan. It’s really not a great idea to get the crew out of bed early on Saturday morning and then stuff around all morning because you're not sure where to start.

As we said, your video doesn’t need Bollywood sets or choreography, but do sit down to work out how you want to show your song off. Rough up some storyboards of each key scene and note where you’ll be standing, how you’ll use close-ups and what props you need.

Hopefully, then, when everyone rocks up on Saturday, you’ll be ready to brief them properly and use their time well. Happy crew, no wasted cash for the rented equipment and a much better video.

SHOOTING FOR POST

All sounds a bit serious: shooting for post... Anyway, we can pretty much guarantee that for every 10 seconds of footage you like, there will be about 10 minutes you hate and another 10 that are out of focus. That’s where post-production comes in and the more you have to work with, the better. Film is cheap, really cheap, so keep rolling: the bit of footage where everyone is practicing the next take might just make it to the final edit.

LIVE OR ‘LIVE’?

Filming a live gig isn’t a bad way to go: lots of energy, the vibe from the audience and of course, thunderous rounds of applause. But you might only get one take. If you want to make this type of video, you’ll be wise to have a couple of cameras running as you’re likely to spend a lot of time editing to get the lights and effects looking good.

Better to fake it. We won’t tell anyone. Ideally, we won’t know. Fill your set with the music class and synch the audio up later. Appoint a director to tell the audience what to do and spend some time lighting the set. The best bit? You can do as many takes as you want.

EDITING

Great footage? Tick. Great song? Tick. Now you need to cut it up...

The editing process has the ability to ruin great footage or turn something average into a winner. It can be a lot of fun putting the pieces of the music video puzzle together. So, before you start, think about the end result: you want the pacing of the edit to compliment your song.

Oh, and one last thing. Don’t try and edit with the whole band. It will not go well.

SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE

For Macs and PCs respectively, software like iMovie and Adobe’s Premiere Elements offer good, straight-forward editing options. There are plenty of more complex programs around too, but unless you’ve got ridiculous amounts of time on your hands and a bucket of money, they’re normally more trouble than they’re worth.

Lastly, make sure your hard drive is clean while you’re working on the edit: video files take up a heap of memory and crashing your computer on the final scene isn’t fun. If you can borrow a separate hard drive, do.